Who guides you in an unfamiliar city to reach your destination? There are maps and signage to help you in locating a particular place. In the same way, visitors coming to your website’s landing page should be guided properly with clear navigation to make them explore your site further.
Hierarchical and intuitive website navigation helps your visitors in finding your blog, email signup page, or product listings without wastage of time. This establishes a close relation of conversions and bounce rates with your website’s navigation structure. More you are able to predict your user’s behavior and design your page accordingly more conversion opportunities exist for you.
In short, the purpose of website navigation is to convince your visitors to take a particular action and give them reasons to click on specific links present on your website.
A website’s usability and aesthetics play an important role in influencing user experience. A web development company takes care of multiple web design and development aspects for good user experience such as Fonts, colors, and images, Headlines and CTAs, Availability of contact information, Page load time & Form design.
Most importantly, website navigation that allows visitors to flow from one page to another uninterruptedly is one of the top factors to consider. After all, if visitors are not able to find your web form, there is no significance of the prettiness of your website. If you’ve used website navigation best practices visitors keep on coming to your website and eventually may convert into a lead.
The navigation system guides your visitors through different areas and information contained within the website. Here we’ve clarified a few considerations to ensure your site’s navigation helps your visitors remain engaged in the most effective way.
Hypertext should be easily visible & obvious
Make sure hypertext differs from every other element present on the page. Use a different color for it, underline, or make it bold.
Avoid cluttering your header navigation bar by including the number of links rationally. To make it more organized use the main heading, then include a sub-menu consisting of other links category wise.
Sidebars should stand out
It’s a good practice to separate sidebar with the rest of the content on the page. Designers can use a different background color for it other than body copy. Ensure your website has plenty of separation between your sidebar and other elements.
You have made your business website for users. They can be from different backgrounds. Some of them may have experience of exploring websites in the past, some may be novice or even first time users. Put your header navigation bar, sidebar, and footer where your visitors have no problem in locating them.
Creativity is okay, but it should not compromise with impeccable user experience.
Make the design and text of your website’s navigation menu as clear as possible so that visitors know what you mean. It’s the reason why most of the websites use simple words such as “About Us” “Contact” “Services” that are easy to understand.
Take advantage of footer space. You can repeat the header navigation bar in this space or you can have less important links placed in the footer. This allows you to strategically place links where your website visitors might need them.
Give instant access to business’s priorities pages
Make a provision to direct your visitors to the most important pages for conversions and sales. It will have a positive impact on your business’s bottom line. For example, you can add a great CTA such as “Download” in your blog post that writes about a mobile app.
With an increasing number of smartphone users, it’s always advantageous to have website navigation that renders properly on the mobile screen. Most of the content management systems offer responsive design and themes to users and you should make use of them.
Whether you ask your visitors to sign up for your email list, download a mobile app or schedule a call, make the calls to action buttons bolder and brighter than other links.
Conclusion
Website navigation is one of the most fundamental aspects of website design that should act as a guiding force for your website visitors. Instead of copying attractive looking websites simply because they look good, find out what navigational elements are most important for your unique business & audience and then create a “clear and intuitive” strategy around it.
Additionally, incorporate links that are appealing for your visitors and prompts them to take action over your website calls to action buttons. After all, the ultimate aim for maintaining a business website is to convert visitors into leads or to sell your products. The navigational links should be able to engage, motivate and give your users other reasons to stay on your website – if this objective is met your online success is guaranteed.
We hope you liked this article. If you have further questions about website navigation practices or want a free website assessment done feel free to connect with us.
We will be happy to answer your questions and to help!
