Website Navigation: 6 useful tips
To make the most of your online business, your web site should have a clear navigation. If your site has a clumsy web site navigation, prospective customers will have problem in getting basic information related to your products or services. If such a thing happens, the effect may be quite damaging on your business. So, you should review your web site and monitor its performance on a regular basis to ensure that the navigation works fine. Otherwise, your competitors will have an upper hand by drawing your site’s frustrated visitors to their web site.
You can use the following 6 tips to improve your site’s navigation:
- List your products and services under relevant categories: List your products and services under appropriate categories keeping the customer perspective in mind. In case you list whatever you have to offer under suitable categories, your visitors will have no hassle to search what they are looking for. For example: You can highlight some important characteristics of your products or services under “Feature & Benefits” while a section marked “Special Offers” can entice the visitors with some hard to resist offerings.
- Use Breadcrumbs: If your web site has several levels of navigation, you can use breadcrumbs. The breadcrumb trails will allow visitors to move across your site and get back to a specific section with ease.
- Make your navigation visible clearly: It pays to have the navigation in areas of your website that have a fixed location. Remember to be consistent by putting this navigation on all the relevant pages. This will help your customers to move throughout your web site without getting annoyed or lost.
- Create a sitemap: A sitemap page acts as a central source for the visitors where they will find the relevant page that they are searching for. A sitemap will also help your site get an improved position in the search engine rankings as it offers a clear overview of the web site to your visitors.
- Use Search boxes: If your web site has a large volume of web pages and content, it is wise to add a search box to your site. Such a search box will act as a time saving solution for your customers who will be able to find relevant information easily.
- Use internal links to relevant sections: You may add “similar products/services” or “perhaps you will like these too” type of links in your side navigation bar, connecting internal links to other sections that are either relevant or similar in some way. This type of interlinks will help you to offer additional services and products to your customers. Such interlinks can prove to be a boon especially for e-commerce web sites, causing an increase in the sales and orders.
|
