How You Can Make Your Site Easier to Navigate

6 years ago | Posted in: Technology | 722 Views

Website navigation is an integral part of your website, designed to help your site visitors to navigate around your site and make it easy them to pinpoint exactly what they’re looking for. However, the larger and more complex your site is, the more focus you should have on your navigation. Without easy-to-use navigation, your content will become hard to get to and frustrate your site visitors. In this guide, we will be going over how you can redesign your site to be more easily navigable.

What You Should Know  

1. What Should be Your Key Point of Focus When Creating Site Navigation?

Don’t assume that navigation is primarily designed for aesthetics, it has a defined function to help your visitors move around your site. People are looking for navigation that not only works but helps get them to where they need to go quicker. However, keep in mind, navigation shouldn’t be flashy, which can distract your site visitors.    

2. Is There a Connect Between Classification and Navigation?

Classifications are how your site is organized into groups and subject areas, but navigation is how your classification is presented on your site. Simply put, you can’t have one without the other.   

3. How Does Navigation Mean to Your Site’s Search Function?   

Although people generally find the content they’re looking for by using your site navigation, another option is to search for the content itself. If your navigation doesn’t narrow down the user’s search enough, the search box on your site can provide them with the focused content they’re looking for.   

What You Can Do    

1. Design the Site Navigation for the Visitor

Since the site navigation is all about helping your users find the content they’re looking for, it’s important to keep them in mind when designing your site navigation. Since studies have shown that usually site visitors aren’t exactly sure what kind of content they’re looking for, your site navigation is a great place to display a variety of options that they can choose from.    

2. Remember That Visitors Want Plenty of Options

It’s obvious that not every site visitor is the same, which is why it’s important to have plenty of options available to them. The more options you have, the more easily navigable your website will be to the visitors that visit it. To begin this process, be sure to research what is omnichannel first. This can help you to open up more options for your customers.    

3. Make Your Navigation Consistent   

If you have a style of navigation on one page of your site, it’s crucial that you have it the same way across your entire site to avoid confusing your visitors. When it comes to maintaining your customers and having an easy-to-navigate site, fluidity and consistency are key.    

4. Don’t Try to Mislead Site Visitors    

Avoid the possibility of your visitor finding a dead end, always try to anticipate what they want to find on your site. For example, if you only sell to people in the United States, make sure that you write that down specifically on your order form.   

5. Offer Support With Site Navigation    

The open web is similar to a library. Although, when you visit a library, you have support in case you can’t find something. You will need something similar for your site navigation, in case one of your visitors can’t find something, such as:

– Allow your site visitors to email you or open a chat if they can’t find something they’re looking for, which you can use to get back to them quickly

– Offer guidance for how your site visitors can search for content more efficiently

– Avoid annoying your site visitors if they filled out a form wrong. For example, if they didn’t fill out their phone number, just ask them for it, don’t make them redo the entire form over again.

 

by: Sia Hasan

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