Planning the

Navigation Bar

Most websites, WordPress sites included, have a primary navigation bar that is visible across all device types. If your site has many pages and a lot of content, everything might not fit on this bar unless it is nested below a main menu. As you decide what pages your website will require you can choose whether that page will be visible on the main navigation bar or if it will be nested below one of the primary menu items. You can also add menu items to the footer at the bottom of the page. Social media icons are often included in the footer of the page. If you have social media sites, you should gather the urls for these sites and list them as part of your planning documentation so you or your web developer knows just where to look when they are ready to add your social media links to the navigation.

Once you have figured out what pages you site will need, this should be a pretty easy task. Look around at existing businesses like yours and see what links they have on their navigation bars. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Keep in mind that shorter is better when thinking up names for your navigation links. The shorter the Link title the more can fit on the navigation bar. If you have a smaller budget site, this will probably not be an issue but, if you have a larger site with tons of pages and content you may have to keep word length in mind or use nesting. For example, imagine a shop selling many different types of items. The shop would not list each product separately on their top navigation bar. They would provide a basic heading and then have all their product categories nested under that top level heading on the navigation bar. The rest of the products and categories will only be seen if a visitor hovers over or clicks the main link and the drop down menu is expanded though. So make good word choices on your navigation bar link titles and choose colors for your navigation that beg to be clicked and interacted with. Make them stand out or use mouse over effects.