How to improve your site navigation
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It is undeniable that every website has some form of site navigation. The main question is, are your site visitors bale to navigate through your website with ease? If not, you need a solution ASAP. The navigation problem might be the undiagnosed sickness slowly eating on your online campaign. The majority of web designers out there are experts in creating beautiful websites, the only problem is these experts are not quite there when it comes to marketing websites. The thing is, a good marketing website need to be created for the user, not for admiration purposes. You might therefore want to know how to improve your site navigation to ensure that it is working right.
Just because a site has navigation options build in does not mean they are working properly. If the navigation options in your site are not working, it will break the overall performance of your site, something you definitely don’t want, Do you? With strong navigation options, site users will be able to find the information they are interested in fast and easily. If the navigations of your site are not working, visitors will be scared away for the exit. This increase bounce rate for your site and reduces on the conversion rate of your site.
How do you work on the navigation options of your site?
First, keep it consistent. Consistency in where and how navigation options appear makes it easy for users to find them. If the consistency of navigation options is changing from page to page, it makes users reorient themselves, something not many will do.
Second, on your menu, you need to have clear division of categories. This is also applicable to subcategories. Don’t have all navigation options clustered on a single bottom or space. This will make it unclear for users to determine which option they are clicking. When this is the case, the best option for the user is to exit and search for another site easy that is clear on navigation options. By this, you will have lost that customer to your competitor with the right and clearly divided categories.
Third, ensure that all your navigation options are clickable links. Normally, the natural inclination of a site visitor is, to move around the website, clicking through is the way. If any of your navigation is not clickable, then it obviously confuses the users and they might opt to back out. Even if you are using drop-down menu with subcategories, a click should be able to take the user to that sub-part.
Fourth, you have to ensure that all navigation options have accurate and appropriate titles. Even though this might seem obvious, it is very easy to overlook it. The title of a category, which represents a navigation option, should have a title that understates what the category contains. Misleading title text will confuse, annoy, and frustrate users who will immediately abandon the site.
After you have done all that is needed, don’t assume it is working right. Actually, you should adopt the thought that, it is not working until you test it. Go to the user interface of the site and look how the various navigation options look and work. Do they work the way you expected? Will a visitor be comfortable using them? Are they easy to find? If these questions are answered positively, then you navigations are right.
