Jakob Nielsen’s and Kara Pernice’s new book on “Eyetracking Web Usability” has proven some ideas for necessary element placement on your web pages. This book shows eyetracking data on the most important elements that you should place on all your web pages and where to place them.
- Perceptible menus, with some graphic or color delineation, across the top and usually on the left. This means that text-only links are not expected and should not be used.
- A Home button in or near the menu on the far left of all pages, except sometimes not the home page.
- A logo or branding in the upper-left corner of all pages. I would also add a link to the home page on this logo.
- An open search field in the upper-right corner of all pages.
- You shopping cart icon should appear in the upper-right corner of all pages.
- Any login/logout feature should appear in the upper-right corner of all pages. I would not place your admin links in this location on a Wordpress theme. I believe this is referring to shopping websites and other similar sites.
- Utility navigation should appear at the very top or very bottom of pages. These links should be subtle and visually weaker than the main/global navigation.