5 Quick Tips to Simple & Effective Site Menu Organization

How would you rate visitor usability of your site menu organization?  It’s important to consider because the design of your website’s navigation has a huge impact on success than almost any other factor.  You see, everything vital to your website is connected to the navigation…from blog content, to the main services and products you offer, to the URLs. 

When people visit your site, your objective is to help them find your content relevant to their needs.  You want to make this as simple and effective as possible to increase engagement, thus improving lead and sales conversions.  The easier it is for them, the more likely they are to return and be connected with your brand.

The goal is to share a few quick and easy ways to ensure your site menu organization enhances user experience and positions you to achieve your website goals.

#1 Keep Navigation Bar in Standard Location

When users visit your website, they expect to find horizontal navigation across the top or vertical navigation down the left side.  Although you want to impart creativity and brand personality through your website, getting savvy with the location of your navigation is not wise and can negatively impact website experience.

Putting your navigation in standard places makes your site easier to use. This means lower bounce rates, more pages per visit and increased conversions.

#2 List Fewer Menu Items

Don’t be the brand where your website lists way too many options on the menu bar!  Choosing fewer menu items makes it less likely that your visitors will scan past important items.  The ones that remain become more prominent and most likely to be click on.  Challenge yourself to limit your navigation to about five items.

#3 Make Your Website Navigation Descriptive

When your navigation shows your main services or products, your site will communicate instantly.  It improves website usability and is a huge opportunity to indicate your relevance to search engines.  Using labels that include popular keyword phrases that your audience is searching for will help you boost SEO.  Make it descriptive, yet concise!

#4 Avoid Using Drop-down Menus

Drop-down menus can interfere with SEO and user experience.  When visitors click on your menu item, they are ready to move forward, yet, a drop-down menu appears giving more options and creating a slight moment of friction in the minds of your visitors.  Plus drop downs encourage visitors to skip important top-level pages.

As for SEO, depending on how they’re programed, drop-down menus can be difficult for search engines to crawl, thus impacting website visibility.  Focus on listing your most important items in navigation, then create categories in your sidebar for other topics.

There is one exception to this rule…and that’s with using mega drop-downs which tends to work well for site navigation.

#5 List Important Items First & Last

Ever heard of the “serial position effect”?  Based on psychological and media research, it says that people tend to recall items at the beginning and at the end of a list better than they recall items in the middle.  Your navigation is no exception.

Put your most important items at the beginning of the navigation list and the least important ones in the middle.   Your “Contact” should be the last item on the list, placing it at the far right in top-level horizontal navigation.

Conclusion

Finding proven ways to improve users experience is vital to increasing engagement and conversions on your website.  Implementing these simple yet effective changes gives you a great start and advantage towards achieving this goal.  Making it easy for navigation will breed happy visitors who will want to share your content with their networks!

Ready to bolster your website project that conveys your brand message while captivating your audience?  Reach out to us here and let’s chat!  We’re qualified to help enhance your website goals!

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