When deciding on your site layout, there’s one important thing to keep in mind: Your site should be as user-friendly and as easy-to-navigate as possible.
If a reader lands on your site, you want them to be able to obtain the following information in lightning speed:
- Who you are and what your site is about.
- The most important pages on your site.
- How to navigate your site.
The easier a reader can find this information, the quicker they can understand what your site is about and the quicker they can read through one or more of your articles.
There are some basic rules of thumb to follow in this regard:
1. You should have a brief summary of who you are and what your site is about either on the homepage or on the side bar of your site.
An example of a site that has this info on the homepage is nateliason.com:
Nat tells you exactly who he is and what his site is all about using a few brief paragraphs.
I personally choose to display this information on the sidebar of my site so that it shows up on every page of the site:
2. You should have a menu bar that displays the most important pages on your site.
To encourage a reader to peruse through more of your site, you should have a menu bar along the top that displays the most important pages on your site. For me, this menu bar includes:
- About: A page that provides a brief description of who I am and why I started this site.
- Archives: A page that lists every article I’ve ever written.
- Favorites: A page full of affiliate links to financial products and services I recommend.
- How to Manage Your Money: A page that shares a guide to Personal Capital, a financial product I recommend.
- How to Invest: A page that shares a guide to M1 Finance, an investment platform I recommend.
These are the pages that I would like each reader of my site to read through when they visit my site. Obviously they’re unlikely to read through every page in the menu, but by placing them in the menu I’m able to increase the chances that they at least notice these pages.
3. Use the sidebar to display additional helpful info.
The sidebar of your site is another excellent place to put additional helpful information. At the time of this writing I have the following items placed in my sidebar:
- A search bar that makes it easy for readers to search my entire site for articles related to a specific topic.
- A place for readers to enter their email to receive automatic updates when I post new articles.
- A link to the Excel Genius Toolkit, a product I created and sell for $24.99.
- A dropdown menu that lets readers see each of the articles I have written according to the “category” they fall in (e.g. philosophy, psychology, work ethic, or finance)
By including these three features in my site:
- A brief “about” section.
- A menu bar with links to pages I want visitors to read.
- A sidebar with additional helpful info.
I’m able to make my site as user-friendly and as easy-to-navigate as possible.
Full Disclosure: Nothing on this site should ever be considered to be advice, research or an invitation to buy or sell any securities, please see my Terms & Conditions page for a full disclaimer.
