The ABC’s of business website design and User-Experience (UX) are all built around a number of elements, all surrounding the ultimate usability of your site and the ease with which users find information and resources. Even if the site enjoys brisk traffic and contains a wealth of substantive information, if it lacks the proper layout and/or directions that will allow users to easily navigate and obtain the information or products they seek, the site’s poor user-experience will send users packing quickly.
What follows are several key mistakes we see in the design of website navigation tools and what to avoid when you plan the layout of your business’ website:
Non-Standard Style of Navigation
Nearly all websites incorporate the ubiquitous homepage navigation bar. These elements are incorporated in nearly 99% of all websites because they provide a good user-experience and they simply make sense. Web designers should avoid trying to reinvent the navigational wheel just for the sake of uniqueness at the expense of a good user-experience.
Use of Generic Descriptive Labels
Navigational tools should be descriptive and aligned to sound SEO keyword strategies. The use of common and generic menu descriptives often fails in improving a site’s user-experience, but more importantly, can hurt the site’s SEO ranking and web authority.
Over Use of Drop-Down Menus
While utilized in nearly every website, drop-down menus often contribute to an overall negative user-experience when they offer too many options. Too many options provide too many opportunities for users to become confused and frustrated with a site’s navigation. Furthermore, drop-down menus tend to draw user attention and focus away from the core pages of a website, thereby negatively impacting core messaging and branding.
Too many Navigational Tools
A website’s home page is the most important page for successful SEO management. Google search considers the home page to be the true “authority page” as all other interior pages are linked to it organically. Should homepage navigational tools offer more than 8 links within a drop-down menu (most people’s short-term memory can only recall up to 8 items), it will only serve to confuse and distract the user. More importantly, more home page navigational options will only serve to decrease the “authority” of the site’s home page in a single topic area and may reduce a site’s search rankings.
(Leveraging Social Media to Build Your Website Authority)
Getting the Order Wrong
People tend to remember the first and last items on any list. The same holds true for the order of website’s navigational tools. Navigational headings for a website’s most important pages should be in the first and near last positions, with the “Contact” heading taking the industry-standard last place on your site’s navigation bar.
Remember that creating a good user-experience for your site visitors begins and ends with navigation. So be wary of creating a confusing, cluttered navigation menu and streamline where ever possible. Your navigation menu is like a roadmap to your site. The more difficult it is to read, the more likely users will get lost and leave. And you don’t want that to happen.
For more information on improving your website’s navigational layout and user-experience, contact the web design professionals at Proctor Digital at 773.664.5819 or via email at info@proctordigital.com. We love to help businesses get a leg up on the competition.