How to Optimize Your Website Navigation for Increased Engagement and Conversions

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A potential customer lands on your website, ready to buy. But instead of smoothly finding their way to checkout, they’re stuck, lost in a maze of confusing menus and broken links. What do they do? They leave. And just like that, you’ve lost a sale. Today, we’re tackling one of the most overlooked aspects of web design—navigation. I’ll walk you through the do’s and don’ts of website navigation so your site becomes a seamless experience that keeps visitors engaged and converts them into customers.


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ADA Compliance

-> EP 004: The Accessible Website: ADA Compliance Unveiled


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Episode Transcript

Carrie Saunders (00:00):
Have you ever gone to a website and just
clicked away so fast you didn'teven realize what you did.
Why do you think that's thecase?
Many times, it is the customernavigation that is one of the
key elements above the fold thatis really important for
customer conversion and customersatisfaction.
Today, we're tackling one ofthe most overlooked aspects of

(00:24):
website design, and that isnavigation.
Like I mentioned, I'll walk youthrough the do's and don'ts of
website navigation so your sitebecomes a seamless experience
that keeps visitors engaged andconverts them into customers
much more easily.
Welcome to the eCommerce MadeEasy podcast.
I'm your host, k Saunders.
When we started this business,all I had was a couch, a laptop

(00:45):
and a nine-month-old.
My main goal To help others.
Now, with over 20 years in thee-commerce building industry,
and even more than that in webdevelopment, I have seen a lot.
I love breaking down the hardtech into easily understandable
bits to help others besuccessful in their online
business.
Whether you're a seasonede-commerce veteran or just

(01:06):
starting out, you've come to theright place, so sit back, relax
and let's dive into the worldof e-commerce together.
Welcome back to the show.
Today, we're talking aboutwebsite navigation and why it is
so important for customersatisfaction and customer
conversion.
It is one of the first thingsyour customers see when they
come to your website.
It isn't just a design element.

(01:26):
It is one of the first thingsthat your customers see when
they come to your website.
It isn't just a design element.
It is actually the backboneexperience for your user, and a
clear, intuitive navigation menucould be the difference between
someone staying on your site orbouncing off of it forever and
never coming back.
So why do we need we've touchedon some of it, but why do we
need a great customer navigationmenu?
It really helps keep yourcustomers engaged.

(01:48):
When they don't feel confused,when they don't feel lost,
they're going to keep lookingthrough your site, especially if
they find it interesting.
It really guides them towardstaking the next desired action
as well, and a bonus is itrelates to search engine
optimization.
If it's well-structured, it canhelp guide major search engines
like Google and Bing throughyour website and show them what

(02:12):
are the most important pages onyour website.
So having it structured wellactually helps you for search
engine optimization as well.
88% of online consumers areless likely to return to site
after a bad experience, andnavigation is often the culprit,
which is why this is a superimportant but many times very
simple element to fix on yourwebsite.

(02:34):
So let's jump into some of thosedo's.
What are the things we actuallywant to do on our website?
What are the good things weneed to have?
So, first, we want to avoidvague terms and have intuitive
terms.
So this is where we come backto our theme that we tend to
have in this podcast episode wewant to be clear and not clever,
so we want to use intuitivelabels, like about shop contact

(02:59):
services.
You know, if you're a serviceprovider, that would be one.
We want to make sure these areall very clear.
We also want to have only aboutfive to seven items on our menu.
We want to avoid overwhelmingvisitors.
There are a few exceptions tothis and those are very large
e-commerce sites.
You may need more, like 10.
I would not go too much morethan 10, but you might need more

(03:22):
like 10 or so.
As long as you have them wellorganized, it's probably still
going to work pretty well andI've seen it actually be very
successful for some of ourclients.
But we want to, in general, keepit about five to seven items to
avoid overwhelming our visitors, and I highly recommend that
you have the about and thecontact as being one of those or

(03:43):
two of those menu items acrossthe top.
Generally we find these off tothe right side of the top
because we want to make sureit's easy.
If they want to learn moreabout you and your business,
that's really easy to find fromthe about link and if they have
questions or want to contact you, we want to make sure that that
contact link is right up thereat the top.

(04:04):
If both of these are missingone or both of these are missing
, that's going to erode sometrust in the customer.
If it's not easy to find outmore about you and easy to find
out how to contact you, that'sgoing to affect your trust
factors.
We want to make sure that'sright up there at the top.
We also want to be making surewe're making it mobile friendly
and I stress this a lot on thepodcast.

(04:25):
But we want to make sure we'retesting for mobile, make sure it
works seamlessly on tablets,mobile devices of many different
types, and many times we usewhat's called a hamburger menu
for that.
It's a collapsible menu withthree lines kind of looks like a
really flat, squished hamburger.
So make sure that you're havingsomething intuitive like that
that users are used to seeing,such as a hamburger menu when

(04:46):
they're on.
And then we want to also get inthe heads of our customers.
Think about them.
What do they really want tofind first?
What's in their curiosity?
Why do they come to yourwebsite?
What do they want to find first?
So get in their heads and thinkabout that and make sure that
your navigation meets that.

(05:08):
And then, if you have a lot ofpages, I highly recommend having
a search function at the top,especially if you have a blog or
an e-commerce store obviouslyneeds a search function, but I
feel like blogs do too.
I find a lot of websites thathave blogs that don't have a
search function.
For those blogs, having asearch function is really
important as well to have upthere in the navigation.

(05:30):
So some things we don't want todo is we don't want to overcrowd
our menu.
We talked earlier about havingabout five to seven, maybe a
little bit more as an exception.
If you're an e-commerce storewith a lot of items and we want
to make sure that we have itnice and clear and clean and not
overcrowded, and alsoovercrowding can happen even if
you only have five to sevenitems.

(05:51):
If you have all the menu itemssquished together without proper
spacing to make it easy for oureyes to scan, then that's going
to also have that perception ofbeing overcrowded as well.
And then we also don't want tohave an overly complex or hidden
or weird navigation structureon our website.
So you know, multiple dropdownsand flyouts and things like

(06:14):
that.
I would recommend maybe onedrop down, slash, fly out thing.
If you're an e-commerce storeand you have a lot of products
and categories, that's probablyfine, but you need to make sure
that even those, each elementneeds to be nice and clear and
not clever, and well organized,well spaced out so it's easy for
the user to scan and see whatthey're looking for.

(06:36):
And then we also want to makesure that we are testing our
navigation for accessibility.
This is highly important nowand forever, as we want to make
sure that we are up-to-date onour web accessibility standards.
And we will link in the shownotes to our accessibility
podcast that we did earlier onwhen we first started the

(06:56):
podcast and that has some greatlinks to some resources on where
you can find the latestinformation on accessibility.
And when we're doing this, wewant to make sure we're
including keyboard navigation,which means that they can use
your website without using amouse.
So they can just use thekeyboard to get through your
website and tab througheverything and select pages

(07:18):
without a mouse.
And then we also want to makesure it's screen reader
compatible.
So what that means is, forthose that have an eyesight
impairment, we want to make surethat it can read your website
back to them and in the orderthis is really important and in
the order that you wouldvisually expect to see it.
So if you're a person who hasgood eyesight and you can see

(07:39):
the order of your menu, you wantto make sure that the screen
reader reads it in that sameorder.
And if our structure of ourwebsite isn't built properly,
sometimes it'll jump around.
The screen reader won't jumparound because it doesn't know
which comes first.
It's a little bit more advanced, but it's something I highly
recommend you go looking up,because it is the law and it is

(07:59):
something very important becausewe want to make sure our
websites are accessible to alland we also want to make sure
we're not burying key pages.
So make sure essential pagesare one or two clicks away.
I highly recommend one if it isactually essential, just like
the about and the contact uspage.
I talked about making surethose are one click away, very

(08:19):
easy to find.
Now, some that you might want tohave maybe not at the top kind
of depends upon your store andyour services is a shipping or
and or return policies.
Sometimes you'll see there'slinks at the top and that's also
okay to put them at the bottom.
I find that consumers, if theydon't see them at the top,

(08:40):
they're going to look at thebottom, so that's something we
don't want to bury.
We do want to have directlylinked on the page, whether it's
at the top or the bottom, andso that's something to consider
is not burying that.
And then we also don't want touse confusing labels.
We don't want to be using jargonunless that's the purpose of
your website.
If your target is people whouse the jargon and they expect

(09:03):
to see the jargon, that'sbasically the only time you want
to use jargon on your website.
Otherwise, we want to make surewe're back to that clear, not
clever, type of language.
We want to make sure it's clear, easy to read, easy to scan,
easy to, and then we have somebonus navigation tips that can
really help you like, even takeit a step further, and this is

(09:25):
something I find that we aren'thaving nearly as much on
websites lately is breadcrumbs,and what that basically means is
, let's say, you went to thehomepage, you clicked on
services and then you click onone on one consulting.
Well, you just went throughthree steps on the website.
So breadcrumb would show homeservices and then one-on-one
consulting in a row, and it'snot really very big text.

(09:48):
Honestly, it's a very subtlething, but it shows you how you
went through the website.
Kind of like when you go into astore, you walk in the door,
you're going to walk down acouple.
You know, walk past a coupleaisles and then go down one of
the aisles.
Well, in your mind, you knowwalk past a couple aisles and
then go down one of the aisles.
Well, in your mind, youvisually just seen that you went
through the door.
You walked through the store,walked past a couple aisles and
went down, let's say, aislethree.
So you know as a person whereyou just went.

(10:11):
Well, this helps them visualizewhere they just went.
When you have it on your website, it's something that it's a
nice to have.
I think it can really help,especially if you have a lot of
pages.
And then we want to make surewe're highlighting the current
page, make sure it's obviouslyknow where they are, make sure
they still know that they're inaisle three in the store right,
make sure it's not confusing onwhere they are.

(10:31):
And then always testing yournavigation.
Make sure you're always testingit on multiple devices.
Have other people test yournavigation that aren't familiar
with your website.
Have some business friends orsome just in-person friends, and
then we also want to make surewe're keeping it updated.
This is really important.
I want to make sure that youare auditing this regularly Now

(10:53):
regularly for you could be oncea year, could be twice a year,
could be once a month.
It really depends upon how muchyour website's changing as the
year goes by.
But I'd want to make sure youdon't never check it, because
what if you change somethingsimple on your?
You've changed something andyou didn't update your
navigation or reflect it, andnow your customers can't find it

(11:14):
or they get confused.
You know why is this page here.
Maybe you don't offer theservice anymore, but the page is
still there.
We want to make sure thatthings like that don't happen,
which is why at least checkingit once or twice a year is a
really good idea.
Okay, so let's recap thisepisode.
We want to make sure that weare keeping our navigation

(11:34):
simple and have it user-friendlyand accessible.
Those are the three pillars ofa great website navigation, and
great website navigationdirectly impacts conversions and
customer satisfaction.
Nobody wants to be confusedwhen they go to your website.
They want to feel at home.
They want to feel natural tothem, so make sure we make them
feel comfortable at home andknow exactly where they are All

(11:56):
right.
So that's all we have for thisweek's episode of the Ecommerce
Made Easy podcast.
I hope you enjoyed this show.
If you find this this helpful,make sure you're sharing it with
a business friend as well.
That helps them out and helpsus get the word out better to
help others, and we will see younext week.