☰Navigation, pages and addresses

From the pages themselves. Every page has a title, an address and a setting for whether and where it appears in the navigation.

This means: you do not maintain a second list. A new page appears as soon as it is published and is meant to be in the navigation.

Two cases that cause confusion:

• The page exists but is not in the navigation. Then it is marked as “not in the navigation” — intended for landing pages, appendices to the legal notice or thank-you pages.
• The page is in the navigation but empty. Then it has been created but not yet published. Visitors land on nothing.

Through the sorting in the page list. The order there is the order in the navigation.

What makes a good order: it follows how often questions are asked, not how your business is organised.

The usual order, which almost always works:

1. Home
2. Services (or whatever you offer)
3. About us
4. References / News — whatever you have
5. Contact

“Contact” belongs at the end, because that is where people look for it — the last position is the second-best in a navigation. “About us” does not belong in second place, even if it feels that way: visitors first want to know what they will get.

Five to seven. Fewer and the site seems thin; more and nobody can find anything.

If you need more, one of two things is almost always the case:

• Two items belong together. “Services” and “What we offer” are the same thing.
• One item is really a subpage. The individual service belongs under “Services”, not next to it.

On a mobile phone the limit is stricter: there the navigation unfolds, and a list of twelve entries fills the screen.

An exception is clubs with many sections — submenus help there. But even there: whatever is in the main navigation should be something a person can name after the first glance.

Like any other page — the difference lies in the address. A page with the address /services/painting is a subpage of /services.

Where it appears in the navigation is controlled separately: as a submenu item, as a main item of its own or not at all.

When subpages are worthwhile:

• When a service has so much text that it deserves its own page. That is also better for search engines: one page per topic is found for that topic.
• For locations. One page per location with its own text.

When not: if the subpage only contains two sentences. Then it belongs as a section on the main page.

From the title — lower case, hyphens instead of spaces, German umlauts written out as ae, oe and ue. “About us” becomes /about-us.

You can change them, and sometimes you should:

• Shorter is better. /bathroom-renovation beats /our-services-in-the-field-of-bathroom-renovation.
• The search term belongs in it. People search for “bathroom renovation”, not “service 3”.
• No dates in page addresses. A text whose address contains a year looks old as soon as that year is over.

The home page always has the address /.

The old address then leads nowhere. Everything that pointed to it points to nothing:

• Your customers’ bookmarks.
• Links from other websites.
• The search engine entry — until the next crawl corrects it, which can take weeks.
• Links you have sent out yourself.

Before publishing, changing it is harmless: nothing was pointing to it yet. Afterwards, it is an intervention that needs a redirect.

Rule of thumb: take the two minutes and set up the address correctly from the start. That is the cheapest moment.

By marking it as “not in the navigation”. It remains reachable via its address but does not appear anywhere.

What this is needed for:

• Thank-you pages after a form has been submitted.
• Landing pages for an advert or a campaign that are only reached via a link.
• Pages under construction that already need an address.
• Content for a particular group — directions for an appointment.

Important: “not in the navigation” is not protection. Anyone who knows or guesses the address sees the page; search engines can find it too. Confidential content belongs behind the members’ area, not on a hidden page.

Whatever has to be reachable on every page but does not belong in the main navigation:

• Legal notice (Impressum) and privacy notice — both required and reachable from every page.
• Address and phone number. Anyone who scrolls to the bottom is often looking for exactly that.
• Opening hours, if you have any.
• Links to your social media profiles, if you have any.

What does not belong there: a second complete navigation. The footer is not a chance to fit in everything that had no room at the top.

Check once on every page that the legal notice and privacy notice can be reached with one click. That is the legal requirement.

“Start” or “Startseite” if the site is in German. “Home” is an English word in a German navigation and looks like a leftover template element.

Even better in many cases: the logo leads to the home page, and the menu item is dropped altogether. That is what almost all visitors are used to, it saves an item and looks tidier.

The same principle applies to the other items: words in the site’s language that your customers use. On a German site, “Leistungen” rather than “Services”, “Kontakt” rather than “Contact”, and so on.

Exception: if your customers are English-speaking. But then consistently.

For the usual website sizes this is not necessary — and often a bad sign. If a visitor has to search on a site with seven subpages, the navigation is not right.

A search becomes sensible from about fifty pages or a well-filled blog. Until then, you solve the same problem better with:

• clearer menu items,
• an overview page for each area,
• internal links in the text (“more on this under bathroom renovation”).

What almost always helps and costs nothing: a good error page. Anyone who has got lost should not just read “page not found” there, but be offered the most important routes.

It is gone — with all its sections and texts. The address then leads nowhere; images stay in the media library.

Before you delete, check two things:

• Does anything link to the page? A button on the home page, a link in the footer, a menu item. These links are not removed automatically and then lead nowhere.
• Did visitors know it? If so, you need a redirect to a sensible replacement page.

Usually the better answer is: do not delete it, but take it out of the navigation or replace the content with something current. A deleted page is a dead link; a repurposed one is not.

Yes — duplicate, rename, replace the content. That is the quickest route to several similar pages: locations, services, projects.

Two things nobody thinks of:

• Adjust the address. A copy gets a temporary address; it needs changing before the page is published.
• Really replace everything. The most common mistake with copied location pages is the phone number of the first location appearing on all the others.

And the warning about content: five pages that differ only in the place name are treated by search engines as duplicates. Copy the structure, not the text.

With a link whose target begins with a slash: /contact, /services/bathroom-renovation. External targets begin with https://.

Why this matters: internal links begin without a domain name. Anyone who enters the full address ends up, when moving to a new domain, with lots of links pointing to the old one.

Internal links are more than convenience:

• They lead visitors on, instead of leaving them standing at the end of a page.
• They show search engines which pages belong together and which are important.

One to three links per page are enough. A text in which every third word is a link does not get read.

Three things:

• Open in a new window if the visitor is meant to stay on your site. For links that lead out of a process (a booking service, a form), this is right.
• Responsibility. You are not liable for third-party content, but you have to act if you learn of an infringement. Check a target before you link to it.
• Label paid links. A link for which you receive money or something in return is advertising and must be recognisable as such.

And in practical terms: other websites change their addresses. Check once a year whether your external links still lead anywhere.

The website has a main navigation and a footer. Separate navigations for each area are not provided for, and that is usually a good thing.

If you feel the urge, there is almost always one of these behind it:

• Two target groups. Private and business customers, for example. The solution is not a second navigation but two clear entry pages that can be reached from the main navigation.
• Too many pages. Then the answer is structure, not another navigation.
• Two businesses under one roof. Then they are two websites.

Within a page you can of course link as much as you like — a services overview with tiles is practically a second navigation, just in the place where it is needed.

Not for the usual sizes. A breadcrumb trail helps from three levels upwards, and a company website should not have three levels at all.

What helps instead so that nobody gets lost:

• The menu item of the current page is highlighted. That is entirely sufficient for two levels.
• A link back to the overview at the end of a subpage: “View all services”.
• Meaningful addresses. Anyone who sees /services/bathroom-renovation in the address bar knows where they are.

If you really do have a deep structure — such as a club with many groups and subgroups — the first question is whether it can be made flatter.

In order:

1. Is it in the navigation? Check the “show in navigation” setting.
2. Is it published? A page that only exists as a draft can be seen by you in the preview, but not by visitors.
3. Does anything link to it? A page without a menu item and without a link is unreachable, even though it exists.
4. Is the address right? A typo in a link points to a page that does not exist.

The most common case is the second: changes have been saved but not published. In Aurora Hive Sites these are two different things — and that is intentional.

On paper, before anything is clicked:

1. List all existing pages, with their address.
2. Write the new structure next to it.
3. Decide for each old address: it stays, it is redirected, or it is dropped.
4. Only then build.

What you gain: while writing it down, you notice which pages nobody has visited for years — you do not need to rebuild those but to get rid of them.

Build the restructuring as a draft and publish it in one go. A restructuring that happens live over two weeks leaves visitors and search engines with a state nobody understands.

They can be different, and often they should be:

• The menu label is short, because it has to fit on one line: “Services”.
• The page title is the one shown at the top of the page and in the browser tab, and displayed by search engines: “Painting and facades in Dresden”.

The title may be longer and more promotional — it is often the first line someone reads in the results list, and decides whether they click.

Rule of thumb for the title: what, where, for whom — in about 50 to 60 characters. Anything longer gets cut off.

The home page is the page with the address /. If you want to put a different page in this place, there are two ways:

• Move the content. Bring the sections of the desired page onto the home page. Clean, because all links to / stay correct.
• Swap the address. Give the old home page a different address and the new page /. This works, but leaves behind an address that something else used to point to.

The first way is almost always right. The home page is the only address people remember and pass on — it is not something to tinker with.

Yes — with an anchor appended to the address: /services#bathroom-renovation. The browser then jumps straight there.

On one-page sites this is indispensable: there, the navigation is nothing other than a series of such jumps.

Two notes:

• The anchor must be set on the section. A jump target that does not exist simply leads to the top of the page — without an error message.
• For search engines it is the same page. A section with an anchor is not found on its own. If a topic is meant to be found on its own, it needs a page of its own.

One page if you offer something manageable and the site mainly serves as a digital business card. Everything on one page, and the navigation jumps.

Several pages as soon as one of these applies:

• You have several services that each deserve their own text.
• You want to be found by search engines for individual topics.
• You have several locations or target groups.
• More content is coming — blog, references, events.

The search engine question carries the most weight: a one-page website can only be right at the top for one topic. Anyone who wants to be found for “bathroom renovation” and “heating installation” needs two pages.

Switching from one page to several is possible later, but it is work.

Create an ordinary page, take it out of the navigation, and enter it in the form as the destination after submission.

What belongs on a good thank-you page:

• Confirmation that it has arrived — that is the actual purpose.
• When you will get in touch. “We usually reply on the next working day” removes uncertainty and saves follow-up questions.
• A way onwards. Back to the home page, to the services, to the phone number for anything urgent.

What does not: an empty page saying “Thank you”. That is a wasted opportunity at the very moment someone has just placed their trust in you.

They land on the error page. That is the moment at which most visitors leave for good, and the one at which they are easiest to keep.

A usable error page says:

• What has happened, in one sentence and without jargon.
• Where to go next — home page, services, contact.
• How to reach you, in case it is urgent.

What you cannot know: which address someone was looking for. That is why the error page is damage limitation. The real work is avoiding dead links — by not changing addresses without a redirect.