Menus and subsites

Unless your site is small you will probably need a number of submenu pages that users enter from a general category listing on your home page. In complex sites with multiple topic areas it is not practical to burden the home page with dozens of links — the page grows too long to load in a timely manner, and its sheer complexity may be off-putting to many users. Providing a submenu page for each topic will create a mini-home page for each section of the site. For specialized, detailed submenus you could even encourage frequent users to link there directly. In this way the submenus will become alternate home pages in "subsites" oriented to a specific audience. Be sure to include a basic set of links to other sections of the site on each subsite home page, and always include a link back to your main organization home page.

Screen shot: Yale-New Haven Hospital home page and two internal menu pages