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Latest posts by Mitz Pantic (see all)
- Natural Link Building: Does It Work? - April 18, 2013
- The Best Websites To Imitate - April 11, 2013
- How To Steadily Increase Website Traffic - April 9, 2013
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Many Webmasters take their website navigation menu for granted. It is just one of those things that is always there on a website so we often forget how important it really is.
You might have the best content in your niche and people get instantly attracted to you, but if they land on your website and get confused with your navigation system, there is no way you can build a successful website like that. You are building a website so humans can visit, therefore we need to make it easy for the them to navigate around your website.
Website Navigation System Tips
Website navigation is important and it is now time for everyone to think about how the visitor can actually get around the website. When you understand how SEO works, you realize that the navigation system is included in this.
#1. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Years ago people used to try all sorts of navigation systems and move their main menu around all over the website. We’ve even seen flying menus and flash menus, but they all disappeared over time. Now days website visitor expects to see the main navigation system menu in the normal places. Their eyes automatically go and look in known spots, which is usually at the top of the page for the main menu, and just below for the submenu. If they can’t find what they want there, then they move to the bottom of the page and look further.
#2. K.I.S.S
Keep it simple stupid. We all know that saying, but Webmasters like to make things difficult sometimes. Website designs can be beautiful and appealing without being difficult. Make sure that your navigation menus are neat and clean. They are there for a purpose and people need to be able to read them clearly and click on what they want. Many professional WordPress Themes follow this principle of keeping it simple.
#3. Where is The Search Box?
Some people say that having a search box on your website is not necessary. My personal opinion is that the search box is very important and accounts for a big part of your websites usability. This is the backup system for when a person cannot find what they need, so make your website search box appear in an obvious position.
#4. Test Your Navigation Menu
If you have a WordPress website you can easily create drop down menus or multiple navigation menus. This is great but many people make the menu and never think about it again. I like to test my menu to see if people are actually clicking on the menu items. I also like to rearrange the order of the menu and also change the sub menus.
If you have a Google analytics account click on “content” in the menu and then click on “in page analytics”. Google will show you what people are clicking on. Maybe this will tell you that a certain menu item is not worth having there.
You can also set up Goals to see if people travel from the home page straight to a submenu item. Or you can click on navigation summary when investigating a particular page, then you can see the previous and next page. So you can see where people came from and where they left to. These are just a few examples of ways to test your navigation menu.
#5. Include the Boring Basics
People like to be different but website visitors expect certain things. We all know they expect the navigation menu to be in a particular area on a website; however they also expect the menu to contain certain things. For example, the main menu should have a home link, about us, contact us, and so on. If these menu items are missing on the website altogether, people get suspicious.
I myself had to follow the rules too much, but it is a fact that people expect these links in the menu.
Navigation menus are boring but we need them. They are there for the website visitor to navigate through your website. Therefore when creating your navigation menu simply think about what the human user would want and you cannot go wrong.
Twitter: leduxx
I couldn’t find a navigation summary on my Google analytics account… The whole page only has the in-page stats.
Liudas recently posted..Why You Should Install CommentLuv On Your Blog Too?
Twitter: buildwebsites1
maybe there is not enough data yet..?? How about checking the flows of your traffic through your site.. You would be able to see if your traffic is traveling from the home page to the menu item pages.
Go to audience in GA then visitor flow.
Mitz Pantic recently posted..8 Solid Tips To Help You Build a Successful Website
Twitter: blogshopwin
My site is 3 months old. I’m wondering how much data you need?
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You are right Mitz – keeping a easy to access navigation always helps and is appreciated by the readers as well, since they are able to find what they are looking for.
Twitter: buildwebsites1
Hi Harshit
Yes you can tell i like to keep it simple when you see my sites…they work well and earn me great money so extravagant designs are not needed.
Twitter: blogdum
Amazing to know this..I have never checked it.
Thanks for the tips
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Twitter: buildwebsites1
Some of the results will shock you! You might notice that people do not even use half of your menu anyway!
What a great article.I am searching from the google last couple of days That about website navigation.But unfortunately i din’t find any great way.But now my journey comes to an end.I must say What a great article.And once again thanks for this helpful and informative article.
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wow this is definitely a spam comment that is going around! “I found your site when searching in google etc… Funny I get this exact comment on my website..
mitz recently posted..Make Money with Social Media
I agree %100 Mitz. There’s nothing worse than visiting a site of interest, but you have no idea how to find anything. I believe navigation is one of the most important parts of web design. The menu structure on any site I create is always directly under the header, with a few exceptions of course. Like you said, people expect to see navigation in a certain place, and I agree this is probably the #1 spot for it.
Another thing you touched on are flash menus etc. If you have the ability to create nice looking css drop menus, then I would highly recommend these rather than flash or java powered menus. Css menus are much faster and more compatibly over a range of browsers.
Twitter: buildwebsites1
Yes sites and browser are faster and css menus work well. I was really talking about the really old days when people had extravagant menus that took 3 minutes to load.. LOL ..Remember them?
Yep, I remember some of those, although they aren’t used much anymore, mainly for the reasons that you mentioned.
I’ve never really given much thought into checking analytics on my menu traffic, but I most definitely will be from now on. Very good idea. You know a lot of times it is quite hard to come up with the best way to outline your menus. With a little testing phase using analytics, this could really help. Preciate the heads up!
You rarely see those anymore, but you see some of them around still. Just like those annoying slow loading flash intro’s.
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I forgot about in page Analytics. I used to check it fairly often, but for some reason I haven’t checked it in awhile. Thanks for the reminder. Some of the sites I visit the navigation structure is nice, clean, and easy to find what I am looking for. Others are a little more cluttered I guess I would call it and a little on the confusing side. I think your more important pages and information that you really want people to see should be easy to find in the navigation menu.
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Twitter: buildwebsites1
Hi Ray
yeah I always forget to check on analytics all together.. every now and then I have an indepth check..
Twitter: SMARTSocMed
I’ve learned that when it comes to sites, it’s always good to keep things in the place where people expect them to be. There’s no need to get fancy and edgy. Simple is best
D. Dixon recently posted..6 White Hat SEO Techniques You Can Do Yourself
Yes that is right D Dixon! Keep it simple so they know where to find things.
When it comes to navigation menus, I prefer my site to be just simple so that readers will not be so confused. Anyway, it is just a way of navigating the site so it is not really that important to pump it up with style.
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Yes and simply style often looks the best too!
It is really the content you supply that counts.
Twitter: salman1507
Amazing …. I wasn’t aware of the navigation summary feature in analytics! Also I agree with the K.I.S.S saying.
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Twitter: buildwebsites1
yes GA just keeps coming up with more features…and making it easier to use too!
Mitz Pantic recently posted..18 Ways to Turn Your Ordinary Blog into A Million Dollar Business
Twitter: AMBM9
Hi Mitz,
Thanks for the article and this is the 1st time I come across to tracking menu. All these years I have just set the menus and leave them as such. Maybe is time I take a look at them and see what I can do with them.
Cheers…
Michael recently posted..10 How To Get Targeted Social Media Fans Tips
yes I like to analyse most things to see if I am doing the right thing..
Thanks mitz. Simple navigation is comfortable to use by reader. Some times it difficult to do if we have many content or banner that should be displayed.
julidarmaputra recently posted..Comment on The Way To Overcome Acne Without Drugs by read this
yes too many banners is not a good idea. You should always think about your readers first..
Twitter: rancorinfotech
Hey Mitz,
You’re right. Some navigational links, you should never change as visitors are quite familiar with the link location.
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Twitter: xlimderek
Nice Post.
One of the reasons i’d go with the Genesis framework anytime
Simply amazing and Customizable Menu’s
And the beautiful Dropdown that is just awesome.
I have been comended several times just for that theme
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Twitter: buildwebsites1
Yes I love that framework too but I have Thesis so I don’t use that one..
Twitter: saimohan35
hi Mitz Pantic, your words are absolutely valuable. yeah,blog should be simple, don’t need any beautiful themes. i like the concept of search box and analytics analysis topics.
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Twitter: PMStudyCircle
In my blog i kept important pages on navigation bar and moved other pages to the footer; e.g. About, Contact, Privacy and disclaimer etc.
Navigation bar is a very important part of the design of blog and must be designed carefully.
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Twitter: buildwebsites1
Yes that sounds good Fahad. Thats what people expect and you are giving it to them.
Mitz Pantic recently posted..Create Content for Your Readers NOT Yourself
You are right about navigation being so important. My site’s nearly 10 years old. However, I only really started working on it again about 3 months ago (it was our original shop, which we closed but kept the site). I’ve changed it to WP and added loads of content. It’s currently getting some 3 pages per visit average with soime users visiting up to 20 pages. I’m not overly sure whether they’re just lost, but many seem to be on the site for 20 minutes plus.
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Twitter: sdmmovies
Good read article thanks for sharing this valuable informative tips. I like it
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Certainly, none of us will deny the important role of navigation menu in any website.yes It is just one of those things that is always there on a website.Thanks for the tips..
Twitter: teesort
I am using Analytic from a long time but not used this analytic navigation menu. I will check it out soon. Thanks for sharing.
I have learned quite a bit this past year since I started blogging. However, just recently started working on better NAV menu for my blog. Actually WP does make it relatively easy. Now I am looking more into building more links, traffic, etc. Which is how I found this site. Very good info, am also looking into Comment Luv plugin. Just read some things that its not working well with WP or Jetpack? Still researching at this point but sounds good so far!
I have the commentluv plugin on WordPress and also have jetpack lite…I have had no problems at all…In fact is there was I would get rid of jet pack first!
We dont have a search box, but now Ive decided to activate it and see what happens in analytics
Thanks for a good read!
All great points. Especially “keep it simple stupid”. I use Word Press for all of my sites.
Doug recently posted..Why SEO?
Hi Mitz,
Nice post. You are right, people often take the navigation menu for granted, though it is one of the most important parts of the website.
Two tips I’d like to add to your valuable points above:
- The navigation goes hand in hand with your on-page SEO, as you normally include the different menu items in the URLs. You can use this to make most pages rank for one of your money terms if you choose your navigational structure wisely, such as “blog.com/main-term-used-as-navigation-unit/long-tail-keyword-used-as-article-name” (hope you get the idea…)
- The search box has an additional benefit: it tells you exactly what items your visitors are looking for… even those you don’t have yet. So scan the list of searched terms regularly for ideas for your next posts!
Best regards,
Al
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I love the “kiss” tip. Keeping it simple is so important and often times, web designers try to complicate things. When I visit new sites, I get quite frustrated when I have to search around for simple things like a search box.
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Hi Mitz,
I use Goolge Analytics currently, but you have given some additional ideas thanks.
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One imp thing which is pretty useful is to have the contact no and also the email id some where clearly visible and if possible the Location of the business. Helps those users who are in hurry find the useful information within seconds.
I am not really surprised to see how many people don’t know that you can see the clicks in GA like that, Mitz – such a handy option!
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Twitter: Steps2BuildSite
Search box makes navigation easy so its a good option to keep your readers engaged.
BTW thanks for the post!
Chaitanya recently posted..How to Write SEO Articles with Keywords
You’re absolutely right about this. With one of my themes, I didn’t care much about the navigation menu. The menu only showed a few categories and I was like “meh, it’s OK. It looks good”.
Then one day, I wanted to check one of my older posts and then I realized… I COULD NOT FIND THE CATEGORY!
I changed my whole theme because of that. Let that be a lesson to everyone.
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Twitter: @rich_amor
I keep my navigation menu slimmed. But add articles related on my posts.
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