Your website’s navigation could be scaring your audience away!
One of the first things a visitor asks him/herself when they visit your site is whether or not they can get the information they are looking for simply by looking at your navigation.
If your navigation isn’t giving your visitors clear direction to the content they want they will leave your site faster than a skydiving expert in a burning plane.
Three important elements of a good website navigation
- Your website’s navigation should let visitors know exactly what your site is about. If you took away your header and tagline could your visitors tell you exactly what your website is about simply by looking at your navigation?
- Keep it clean and simple and your visitors will love your for it. Putting unhelpful links and useless navigational elements on your site for the simple fact of making it look full of information could be confusing your visitors more than helping and/or guiding them to what is most important.
- Make sure the most important elements of your site are part of your navigation. Making your primary topics, contact form, prized content, and email sign-up part of your top navigation will help people find what they are looking for and allow them to get the most use out of your site.
Your fold will tell them everything they need to know about your site
Your fold area is everything your visitor sees on your site before he/she scrolls down the page.
Providing a clean, visually appealing fold combined with a simple and useful navigational system will give your site the best results in terms of keeping visitors, readers, and customers engaged and likely to come back.
Use 3 to 4 colors to separate various area’s of content and give them flare so that they pop out at your visitors and help guide them to where you want them to go. Don’t overdue your color scheme though, because it can cause your site to look confusing and unprofessional.
Is your navigational system in need of simplification or is it overdone? What are your thoughts on this topic?
This post is part of the conversion optimization series.