It's no secret that a website with bad navigation is less likely to convert visitors into customers. The more complicated the site, the more frustrating it can be for people to find what they're looking for. Nowadays, sites need to be as easy as possible so your visitors don't get frustrated and leave. Let's talk about how to create a user-friendly experience for your visitors. Some of these tips will be more relevant for big ecommerce sites than small business websites, but all can apply no matter what kind of site you're running:
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Focus on SEO
SEO is incredibly important for how people find your site, so of course you should be optimizing it as much as possible! This means making sure that keywords are included naturally in pages and headlines where relevant, not stuffed into pages with irrelevant content. It also means clearly marking up your HTML to indicate what each page is about. Google offers a guide to SEO for webmasters that will walk you through the process.
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Make it Mobile-Friendly
Nearly half of all website traffic comes from mobile devices, so creating a responsive or mobile-friendly site is an absolute must! Not only does this ensure your users have the best possible experience, it also ensures you're not losing out on nearly half of your potential traffic.
Your website needs to be easy for people to use! This means ensuring that links are clearly marked and easy to click on mobile devices as well as desktops. If your menu is too high up on the page, people won't see it! Use breadcrumbs to indicate where they are on your site. Speaking of menus, if you have a lot of links in them (or anywhere on the site), group them into categories if possible.
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Make Sure Your Site Loads Fast
If your website is slow, visitors will leave. You can use Google's PageSpeed Insights to find out how optimized your site is and where you may be able to improve. Your hosting provider should also offer a tool like this one, which will give you suggestions for optimizing your website's speed.
Some sites put their navigation at the bottom or top of the screen. This is a big no-no! A top menu might be out of view when your visitor scrolls down your page, and a bottom one will quickly get lost in oblivion as they skim through articles or product pages. Putting it at the top ensures that anyone using your site can easily find all of the links they're looking for.
Improve Your Website's Usability
The navigation on your website is one of the most important elements that can determine whether visitors are able to find what they're looking for quickly and easily. If you have a large site with lots of content, it's not always easy to know where everything is. If you want an expert opinion about how well your site's navigation works or if you need help reworking it yourself, contact our Sharp Tack Media today! We offer free consultations in which we'll provide honest feedback about any design issue – big or small.
