Is your website navigation clear sailing?
Photo by danheap77
Have you noticed as you search the Web for products or services that websites are harder to navigate than catalogs? After all, you can hold a catalog and flip thru it pretty easily and find what you're looking for.
But online, you're faced with just the one page you've arrived at from Google. How do you get around the site? Does navigation to the products or services you're looking for appear? Or do you feel stranded? Kind of like that panicky feeling you get when you're driving around lost.
The nice thing about getting lost online (and not so much in the car) is it's easy to just click away and find another site. And, of course, that's very bad for your business if they're clicking away from your website!
Your Website Navigation Can be Clear Sailing
A roadblock or barrier for visitors on a website is often called "friction." Points of friction can be slight or more serious, but eliminating them improves performance.
That's why one of the important steps in my 6-Step Website Optimization Method is a Usability Analysis of my client's current website. The thing is, when your prospect visits your site, she wants quick answers and she wants to feel comfortable finding what she needs. My job in optimizing a client's website is to make sure her journey on the site is smooth sailing.
Five Website Elements You Can Check and Start Fixing Today
So here are five things you can look at to make sure your visitor can easily navigate your site.
- The Homepage should be well organized with a clear starting point and navigation/structure that prospects and customers can easily follow. It includes expected standard sections such as About Us, Portfolio/Our Work/Clients, Contact Us, and FAQs.
- The site is clean and easy to read, using subheads, bullets, photos, captions, charts etc for quick scanning.
- Your site provides detailed product or service information within just one to three clicks from the Homepage.
- The layout is focused on readership and selling messages, not fancy design. The color scheme is easy to read with dark text against a white, or light, background.
- The site makes it easy to order or respond. There are few mouse clicks, a simple form, a smooth payment and submitting process.
Check out my previous post on other important checkpoints such as the nav menus, logo, and name placement.
And don't forget the guiding force behind all of your internet marketing: the Web is a visitor-centric, user focused medium. With this foremost in your mind as you write content for your website, blog, emails, social media and the rest of your content marketing, you will connect, engage, and motivate your marketplace.
Contact me if you'd like me to check your website for the barriers to clear sailing that can cost you money.
Until next time,
Nick
Other helpful posts on this subject:
Is Your Content Placement "Steering Wheel on the Wrong Side?
Your Homepage...4 Tips to Get Online Visitors to Stay
