Website navigation refers to the clickable links in your menu bar that show your visitors the types of products and services you offer. These are typically found in the header section and sometimes in the footer of your website. A well-designed navigation strategy will help your visitors stay longer on your site as well as help search engines like Google or Bing rank your site higher. The higher your website ranks, the more website visitors and free traffic your website will bring.
So here are 5 tips that you can implement on your website today.
1. Formatting the layout of your Navigation
Should you have your website Navigation horizontal across the top or vertical along the side? For questions like these let’s look at how some of the biggest companies layout their navigation menus. Let’s look at a few examples…
Here’s Disney’s navigation menu:
Notice how their logo is on the left and the website navigation is horizontal across the top.
Check out Nike’s navigation menu:
Again we see their logo is on the left and the website navigation is horizontal across the top
Let’s look at one more. Here’s Apple’s
Few companies have as many products as Apple does but again they have the same format as Nike and Disney. Logo on the left and the website navigation is horizontal across the top.
Ok, to drive home the point even further, let’s take a look at one of the largest companies in the world. Amazon.
Logo to the left with a horizontal navigation bar.
I’m starting to feel like a broken record. So what can we learn about how our website navigation should be set up? That’s right, the logo on the left and the website navigation is horizontal across the top. That’s pretty much the industry standard and what your visitors have come to expect.
2. Keep your navigation simple.
Disney, Nike, Apple, and Amazon have a ton of products and yet their top navigation is clean and simple. You want your visitors to know exactly what you offer without having them spending a lot of time searching for it. People have very short attention spans and the faster they can find what they’re looking for, the longer they’ll stay on your website and increase your chances of getting a conversion.
3. Sell more products.
Clear and simple website navigation will easily lead your visitors down the yellow brick road and land them straight into your shopping cart. Look at some of your favorite websites or even your own. Starting at the navigation bar how many clicks does it take your customer to get to the cart? The fewer the better. People don’t have a lot of patience, especially when your competitors are just a click away.
4. Measure your website’s navigation performance using Analytics.
After your website’s navigation is set up wait a few weeks then, using Analytics, find out which menu items your visitors are clicking and which ones aren’t seeing much action. Using SEO best practices try optimizing your Navigation to boost the performance of your categories. You may want to label you’re menu items differently and run analytics again after a few more weeks.
5. Better Navigation for a better visitor experience.
You’ve worked hard designing a good-looking website but if people have a hard time getting around it they’ll never convert to paying customers or even fill out the Contact form to receive more info. You’ll need more than a pretty website before they are willing to share their contact info or their wallet for that matter.
People all over the world are constantly visiting websites to get what they’re looking for (and even some things they’re not). There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to grab a slice of all the action and implementing a simple, effective website Navigation strategy will help you do just that.
If you’d rather focus on running your business than setting up your website navigation then let us know. We’d love to help!
