Good Medical Website Navigation Means Good User Experience

Posted: Aug 04 in Web Design tagged Navigation by Ines

When designing a website for medical practices, one of the most important aspects is a clear and simple navigation system. Visitors to a medical website are often looking for specific information and they want to find it quickly. Being able to easily navigate your website leaves them with a good user experience, and the ability to easily use your site can make the difference when they’re looking for a healthcare provider they can understand and trust.

Navigation and Site Usability
Good site navigation provides visitors with the answers to the following three questions:

1. Where am I?
2. Where have I been?
3. Where can I go?

If the visitor is able to answer these questions when navigating your website, they won’t feel lost and confused. These visitors will come to trust you as a medical professional because you’re able to quickly and easily provide them with information.

Best Practices
To provide your visitors with a good user experience on your medical website, you need to provide for them, at a minimum, some basics when it comes to navigation.

• Consistency. Every page on your medical web site needs to have the same format. There’s nothing more frustrating to a user than to have the site’s navigation change from one page to the next.
• Include a home page link. Many people forget this because the first page they build is the home page. Make sure each page on your site has a link back to the home page.
• Include a site map. Site maps are nothing more than a list of links to each page on your website. Make sure that each page has a link to this site map.
• Make sure your links match their text. Visitors don’t want to guess where a link is going to take them, they just want to know. Make sure that the text for each link adequately describes where it will take your visitor.