Direction Through Design

Direction crops up in a manner of different ways for a good web developer. Through good web design it is impossible to direct visitors through a particular process while on your site and persuade them to navigate to your most beneficial pages. It is also possible to direct visitors through the most effective placement of content and other elements on your web page.

The eyes are naturally drawn to the top left of a web page. Most visitors expect to see the logo and header for a website with the navigational options falling immediately below this (whether horizontal or vertical). The Back button of the browser is used by a lot of visitors as an extra section to your navigation meaning that eyes will again be drawn to the top left of the screen.

Finding, or determining, the fold of a page should come easy to anybody experienced in web design. This is the section that is immediately viewed without having to scroll or navigate around the page at all. As the content above the fold is always displayed first this again provides a sticky section to a page where many viewers will see the content.

Depending on the purpose of your website, and more specifically each page, web design will usually mean the placement of the most relevant items in these hot spots on the web pages. Branding, advertising, and capture forms are just some of the elements that might demand the most prominent positions and attract the most attention.