Website navigation: the best investment you can make?
Understanding user journeys and website navigation is key to maximising your website’s financial return.
Website navigation and user experience are two of the most important aspects of your website’s performance. But for many organisations, the focus falls elsewhere – with significantly negative results.
Why is website navigation so important?
Good website navigation will reduce your bounce rate, increase visitor numbers, enhance your search visibility on platforms like Google, and drive up inbound enquiries and conversions.
On the flip side, getting it wrong can hinder your chances of progress in all those areas. Here are two of the most frequent mistakes we see:
- Doing something different. We all use the internet every day and we’re subconsciously trained in what we expect from the websites we visit. If your site doesn’t meet those expectations, it will likely immediately confuse your users. So don’t get fancy: make sure your navigation bar is at the top of your website, and that menu items are clear and unambiguous.
- Using design that is too busy. Don’t overwhelm your visitors with cluttered, disorganised page layouts or too many choices. Consider someone who is arriving on your site for the first time. Focus on your key message and most popular services and make sure the visitor can quickly understand your main offerings within seconds of landing on your homepage.
User experience is constantly evolving
At Monitor, we’ve recently updated our own website navigation. We wanted to make it easier for our visitors to find our service pages.
By making those website updates, we helped users quickly find an answer to their biggest question: “What do you do?” It’s a question your website visitors are probably asking, too.
Think of your website like a shop window. The biggest brands invest in dressing their high street windows in the most appealing way possible.
Why? Because shoppers will walk past a poor, confusing or frustrating display. But a great display that’s eye-catching and easy to understand will attract people into the store. Your website is the same.
By taking time to constantly review, evolve and update your site to best serve your users, you’re investing in your business’s future performance.
What better investment could you make?
