When it comes to web designing, there are certain uncharted rules and guidelines. While some designers choose to play safe withing the walled compound, there are others who experiments and innovate new trends in the world of website design.

Horizontal Web Design

The horizontal website design had been considered as a bad practice. However, in the recent times more and more designers are creating websites with long horizontal layouts. This kind of design can work extremely well in certain cases, especially for gallery websites, portfolio websites and so on.

Problems with Horizontal Web Design

The major problem with horizontal web design is that of navigation and movement. This is because web users are not very used to using horizontal scroll bars to move through a website. Moreover, even the mouse scroller is designed for vertical scrolling. This highly limits seamless browsing by the visitors.

Tips for Effective Horizontal Web Design

To make a horizontal website design really effective and easy to use for your audiences you need to work beyond merely relying on the browser's scroller. So, provide your users with a range of navigational tools apart from the standard browser scroller. Here are some tips about what aids you can include in your website.

Huge Buttons
Include big and prominent buttons on the websites that users can easily see and use. A good idea would be to use Forward &Backward arrows that would allow them to move right and left through the website. Just make sure these arrows are easily visible and visitors don't have to search for it.

Labels
Labels are an effective way to inform visitors which way to go. Paste labels on your website that read 'Go' or 'Forward' that guide visitors through the website.

Intuitive Controls
Stick to the basic fundamentals and conventions of the web. For example, when users click on an image on the website, it should offer a larger view or scroll forward.

On-page Sliders
Sliders are an excellent improvement over browser scrollers. It offers a much more sleeker and smoother user experience than having to drag the cursor over.

Pagination Icons
These icons allow users to skip through pages and reach their destined location without having to scroll all through the website. You can also include thumbnails of the pages.

Static Controls
These controls ensure that there is no speeding up or slowing down that is happening when you drag the mouse around the controls.

Browser Scroller
Whatever may be the case, don't eliminate the browser slider. This is because if at all the navigation controls on your website fails to work, users would still have an option to navigate through the website.

Kabir Bedi is a senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a professional web development company based in India. He guides his team of professional web developers to create powerful web solutions for their clients from across the world.