Website Navigation: Why is it so Important?
28th October 2020
Website navigation is simply the process of navigating the pages within an app or website. Good navigation is an essential element of a user-friendly site. Understandably if your visitors can’t figure out where to find the information they want, they’ll leave. Which is the last thing anyone wants. Instead, it is important to provide a clear, hierarchical structure to your website navigation. Helping your visitors find what they want instantly. This blog outlines some of the key reasons why you should keep navigation in mind when designing a website.
Why is it so important?
Your website’s navigation structure is extremely important. A good navigational structure has a huge impact on conversions, sales, and bounce rates. Start by categorizing your content. But in a way that makes sense to your user – not to you, your client or any colleagues.
Try and follow the 3 click rule. In which every page on your site should be accessible within 3 clicks of any other page on your site. In an ideal world, every visitor would start on your homepage and follow the same path through your website. But that’s not the case. Website visitors arrive on a multitude of different landing pages and navigate all over the place.
The connection between Website Navigation & User Experience
As we mentioned previously, website navigation impacts metrics such as bounce rate and conversion rates. Therefore many aspects of web design and navigation play into the user experience. It doesn’t matter how pretty your site is if your users get too frustrated searching for the information they require. Website navigation allows visitors to flow from one page to another without frustration. If you’ve done your job well, visitors leave your site with the intention to return and a potential to make a purchase or sign up to your email list.
Best Practices
Here are just a few of our best practices to help you get started.
Research your audience
Your audience is different from everyone else’s, so you want to know how they behave on your site. Like we mentioned earlier, you have to design the navigation for the consumer not for yourself. If you need help learning what your customers want from your site and how they currently navigate it, then heatmaps can be a great tool to use.
Put your navigation in a standard place
It sounds so simple but put navigation in places where people expect to find it. Creativity is great, but not when it comes at the expense of user experience. Make use of all navigation areas on the website. Including the header navigation bar, sidebar, and footer.
Connect the navigation with the business’s priorities
It’s essential to keep user experience in mind, but it’s also important you have your business goals aligned. For example, you may want to funnel your visitors to the most important pages for conversions and sales. By designing your navigation to fit your business goals you can direct visitors to those fundamental pages. Which ultimately can have a big impact on your business’s bottom line.
Conclusion
Your website navigation should be focused on simplicity and clarity, with your consumer’s needs and business goals in mind. Read our blog about website design best practices to learn all aspects of what you can do to make users want to stay on your website. Ensuring both your visitors and search engines can browse through your content easily. If you need help Fine-tuning your website navigation to ensure you deliver the best possible user experience to your audience, get in touch. studio@bopgun.com +44 (0) 1225 351715
