How to Skyrocket Your Website Conversions with Effective Navigation

Did you know that a well-designed navigation structure for your website can significantly improve your conversion rates? 

When visitors can easily find what they are looking for, they are more likely to stay on your site longer and take the actions you want them to. In this episode, I will go over exactly how much quality navigation can impact your customer conversions, as well as how to improve it! 



How to View your Mobile Website on Your Computer

Firefox:

1. Open up Firefox and go to your desired website. In the upper right-hand corner, click the three-line hamburger menu and go to “More tools” -> “Web Developer Tools.”
2. Once in Web Developer Tools, go to the right-hand corner of the pop-up window and click the device icon to enter “Responsive Design Mode.”
3. Once in, you will be able to see your site in mobile view and also choose which device to view it on.

Google Chrome:

1. Open up Google Chrome and go to your desired website. In the upper right-hand corner, click the three-dot hamburger menu and go to “More Tools” -> “Developer Tools.”
2. Once in Developer Tools, go to the left-hand side of the pop-up window and click the device icon to enter the “Toggle Device Toolbar.”
3. Once in you will be able to see your site in mobile view and also choose which device to view it on.

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Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:00

Did you know that a well-designed navigation structure for your website can significantly improve your website's conversion rates? When visitors can easily find what they're looking for, they're more likely to stay on your website longer and take the actions you want them to. You may be surprised at the statistics and just how big they can be from this one tactic, so stay tuned to find out exactly how much increase in customer conversion you can get, as well as some tactics to make that happen. Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine month old my main goal to help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place, so sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the e-commerce made easy podcast. Today, we're discussing well-designed navigation structures for your website. Ensuring that your website's navigation is clear and simple can increase your website conversion rates anywhere from 15 to 25% or even more, sometimes as high as 50, 100% or 200. It really just depends upon where the navigation started to begin with and where you're going with it. It's a bit astonishing, right. It's a lot higher percentage than I even I expected when I was doing research on the actual numbers here, because I know we have really increased customer conversions ourselves when we've helped clients really take some of these actions we're going to talk about to heart and actually doing them. So when you're building a user-friendly navigation, it really helps your visitors engage and helps guide them towards taking action on your website and the actions that you want to do, which is stay on your website and browse and shop and learn more about you. Think about your own shopping experiences or website browsing experiences. How often have you left a website because you couldn't find what you're looking for? A cluttered or confusing navigation can be a major turnoff for visitors, encourage them to leave pretty quickly, sometimes super fast. So now let's think about those websites that you find yourself lost in, ones that you stay on for a very long time, longer than you would expect. Is their navigation clear? Are you compelled to click on more things than you originally came to that website, for I bet you've encountered some websites like that. So let's talk about how do we design an intuitive navigation structure. How do we get to this point where our navigation structure is ideal and optimal for our users?

Carrie Saunders: 2:50

So first off and we talk about this a decent amount on the podcast is we want to be clear. We want to use straightforward descriptive labels for your navigation menu. Clear is so much better than clever. I know I've said it many times, but it rings true on navigation structure as well. So you want to avoid jargon or overly creative names that might confuse users. For example, instead of using our story, use the words about us. About us is a much more common phrase that you would find on a website to learn about the company. Our story kind of implies that you might not know who they are. You might not know whether there's one of them or really what you're looking for, but when you see about us, you know you're going to learn about that company's website, that you're on the people behind it or the company behind it.

Carrie Saunders: 3:43

You also want to logically group items together and arrange them in an order that makes sense. So placing like services and pricing near each other makes sense versus, like you know, an about us is completely different than maybe your products or services. So you want to group things that are similar together, as people would expect, and you want to keep the menu, the number of menu items, to a minimum. We highly recommend that you keep it about to five to seven menu items. Too many can be very overwhelming for visitors, especially if you're a small or medium business, and because we were kind of used to a lot more menu items on bigger stores like Amazon, because we expect them to offer us a lot of things. But on a typical website, like people who are listening to this podcast, you're going to want to keep it more to five to seven items at max so that you can keep your customers focused on what you're wanting them to do. So what I want you to do after listening to this podcast episode is take a few minutes to audit your website's navigation. Ask yourself these questions Are the labels clear? Is it organizational, logical, are there too many menu items? Make a list of the changes you can implement to improve your navigation right away. I bet you'll see some improvements pretty quickly just by doing a few simple things like this Now.

Carrie Saunders: 5:11

Next, we want to also look at the mobile responsiveness of your website navigation. Most of us are browsing a website, at least for the first time, on our mobile devices. Now, some of us like me. I really don't like to shop on my phone. I would prefer to maybe browse on my phone, but then I would might. Then I'd probably go to a computer to actually do the purchasing. But still, you want to cater to those people who are at least checking you out on your mobile device and maybe want to shop there too. So make sure that your website works well device and maybe want to shop there too. So make sure that your website works well.

Carrie Saunders: 5:45

Your navigation in a mobile website People are always on their devices, as I'm sure you're aware, and we want to make sure that that menu is pretty clear. Many times websites will have on a mobile device what's called a hamburger menu, and if you're not familiar with that term, it's just a menu that's basically three lines stacked on top of each other. It's usually in the left or right hand corner of your website. That is a great place to have your navigation be hidden and accessible for people browsing via their phone, because most people are used to clicking on that thing, whether they knew whether it's called a hamburger menu or not. They're used to clicking on those three lines right to get to your menu items, so it's an effective way to really make sure that the content you're showing is clear and concise as far as what you're displaying, but then make it really easy to get to other parts of your website too.

Carrie Saunders: 6:36

You also want to make sure your menu items are large enough to be touch friendly. You want to make sure that the text on your website for links is big enough that you can touch it with your finger, because we aren't using our mouse on our phones, as you know, so we need to make sure that, no matter what size their finger is, that it can be clicked on. I know, like some of my family members, my uncle. He has these really huge hands and he would probably struggle with some of the tinier menu items. You really need to think about does this? You know, easily, gracefully flat most people's fingers, and you also might want to consider simplifying it for mobile only. You may not want to display everything you display on a desktop site for it. You may want to just display those core essentials that you really want people to take action on. So you can consider using drop down menus too when you do find you need to provide all your links to help the navigation and keep it nice and clean and tight. That way they can click on one menu item and then it might expand and then you can click on a sub menu item. So having things nested can be very helpful too.

Carrie Saunders: 7:44

On mobile, and I really recommend you test this regularly we can do things and adjust things on our website, but many times we forget to go check it on a mobile device. So make sure you're checking it on your phone. There's also some modes that you can check when you're on a desktop or browser, and we will put some information in our show notes on that. Your phone. There's also some modes that you can check when you're on a desktop or browser, and we will put some information in our show notes on that. But you can use a little bit more advanced techniques on a browser on your desktop to emulate other phone types like iPhone of various types and Samsung Galaxy type phones of various devices. So there's, you can select which device you want to be looking at when you're doing on your desktop, which is kind of handy, because if you're an iPhone user and you don't have Android, you can test for Android. If you're an Android user and you don't have an iPhone, you can use your web browser to test for that. So we recommend using a browser to to test and we will give a little bit more step-by-step instructions. It's a bit more of a visual thing so it's kind of hard to describe on a podcast. So we will try to provide some visual information on that on our show notes.

Carrie Saunders: 8:51

So, in conclusion, we want to make sure that we keep our navigation simple and intuitive. It is really key to make it logical. Also, one thing I want to note too that I haven't mentioned yet is you basically want, on your left-hand side of your page, the most important links and then to the right is where you get to maybe the less important links. So typically, like things like about us would be on the right, because some people may not care or want to look and find out more about you, but you're more things that you really want them to click on, more like your products and your services. Those are going to be more on the left side of your navigation and you go to the least important things on the right side and by auditing your current navigation and making necessary improvements, you can make it easier for your visitors to find what they need and take action.

Carrie Saunders: 9:40

Necessary improvements you can make it easier for your visitors to find what they need and take action. So I recommend you do this regularly. Keep on top of this. Put this maybe once a month check, especially if you're adding things to your websites pretty regularly. If you're not adding things to your websites too regularly, maybe once every six months would be okay, but make sure you put this in your schedule. It shouldn't take you too long to do, but it's very, very vital and important, especially when we can see 15 to 25% or more increases on our customer conversion. If this is really nailed down and done well, all right.

Carrie Saunders: 10:10

So that's all I have for this week's episode of the podcast. Thank you for joining me. Be sure to visit our show notes on our ecommercemadeeasypodcastcom website. I can't seem to get that out today. If you're watching on the YouTube channel, make sure you hit that subscribe button, and if you're listening on my podcast, hit that follow button wherever you're listening. If you're loving my e-commerce made easy podcast, I'd be thrilled if you could rate and review us on Apple podcast. That really helps grow our audience and really reach out to more entrepreneurs and online business owners like yourself and help their business thrive. Thank you again for listening and we will see you next week.