One of the most valuable assets of your business is your website. It is more than just a place to promote your products and services. A well-designed website reflects everything your brand stands for. It helps you in developing a strong online presence on search engines and social media platforms.
A website with poor navigation is perceived as unprofessional and ineffective and can severely affect the success of your business. With that in mind, here are several common problems with website navigation, and how to fix them.
Problems
- Hidden Navigation
You can’t afford to hide your website navigation because it’s too important to the overall user experience. Hidden navigation items on a site increase the time it takes for visitors to search for what they need, thereby increasing bounce rate.
Hidden navigation manifests in several different forms. It could be in an unusual spot for navigation on your website, or it could be navigation that blends in too much with your web design. Alternatively, you could conceal your items behind web design elements such as a hamburger menu or a “more” button.
The intention of saving space may be good, and the look may be appealing to anyone intimately familiar with the site. However, if your navigation is hidden and its items are not visible to new visitors, you have a problem.
How To Fix It
Ensure the navigation is visible and accurately represents the options available to your users at a glance. Some whitespace is also beneficial, both between the navigation, the rest of the site and between individual NAV (Net Asset Value) items. You can also get the help of a professional web design agency Perth
- Too Many Options
Who hasn’t visited a website and immediately left because the options were too overwhelming?
There are two reasons for this. Having too many navigation items, especially if they are not hierarchically sorted into subcategories, makes it difficult to navigate. Second, having too many options right away from your landing page can have a negative impact on your page authority.
Most external pages link to your homepage, which Google considers to have the most authority. This authority is primarily distributed to pages that are directly linked from your website’s homepage. The more pages you link to, the lower their authority, and thus your ranking for those pages drops.
How To Fix It
Provide users with only the essential information, which should be limited to 7 items or less. Less is more, and each removed menu option makes the remaining stand out even more.
- No Responsive Design
More than half of all web pages are now accessed via mobile devices. These mobile users are potential customers, and you cannot afford to ignore the majority of the market. Unresponsive websites distort how your website appears on mobile devices; text bounces, images merge, and the search box is hidden. You run the risk of losing visitors to your competitors.
How To Fix It
Make your website responsive. One of the advantages of a responsive website is that it requires less maintenance and has a higher level of credibility. Google prefers mobile-friendly websites. Don’t force your user to only access your site via a desktop.
Conclusion
It is easy to underestimate the importance of website navigation for your users. But it’s issues like those mentioned above that have an enormous impact on conversions. If you are facing some website navigation issues or want to outsource this problem to a web design agency in Perth, feel free to contact us today.
