Why is navigation important for your business website?

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Credit: - http://www.webdogs.in/importance-of-website-search-navigation/

When it comes to a website, easy navigation is one of the up-most essential features of any website design. The navigational structure is a roadmap to all the different areas and information contained within the website. Website navigation is not just the sitemap. It is achieved by a collection of links that form the Website Navigation Bar. Having organized and easy-to-follow navigation for a website is very beneficial and essential for the overall user experience, which ultimately leads to more business for you. You creative website is pointless if people visiting it are exciting webpage as they find it difficult to navigate around it to find the information they are searching for. So, good navigation is a set of directions. Getting it right makes the whole web designing process easy and smooth.

Reasons Why Navigation is Important for Your Business Website

People tend to spend more time – Decreasing the Bounce Rate

Your business website’s ultimate goal is conversion. Easy navigation will encourage people to stay when they land on your home page. It allows the users to explore your site and know your products or services better, giving them confidence in your brand. If a visitor can navigate your website with ease, chances of him exiting your site immediately are less. Hence, decreasing your bounce rate and increasing the possibility of a purchase.

Good Navigation Works Well with SEO

Search engines recognize that people are spending time on your website for specific keywords relevant to your business. They monitor this pattern, and gradually they will start ranking your page for a particular set of keywords in your location. Furthermore, good navigation enables search engine bots to index your website efficiently when they crawl your every web page. Essentially it means if you don’t have easy navigational links, it’s affecting the usability of your site, and it may not be indexed by search engines either.

Maintains a Consistent Flow of Content

Easy-To-Use navigation that makes sense also includes a steady flow of content. Your business website will be successful only if your users can easily access the content in the form of products, services or information without any veil, mystery or chaining of links. It is essential that you highlight the section that holds USP of the business. The last thing you want is for people to stop and figure out where it is that they will find what they need. They should be able to see the information they need all by themselves. You should never have multiple links leading to the same page – it is just confusing! If this happens frequently, he leaves the website to and would choose a site with better navigation.

How Can You Achieve It?

Be Distinct, Intuitive, Clear and Simple

People expect, and they like it when things work out their way. People coming to your website are mostly impatient and hope that navigation menu to be visible – sticking with conventions and trends. There is nothing worse than people not able to find your navigation easily, being held on a homepage. Keep it clear! While planning your website navigation, visit multiple websites and consider how the users think about. It will help to design a site that is intuitive and unambiguous which ensures the user stays on the course to the right content. If a website fails to do this, the impatient user will exit within a few seconds. Hence, impacting your website ranking by increasing the bounce rate.

Have a Structure

Having a structure for your navigational menu is like telling people that your business is as organized as your website. A follow-able route is not unwieldy and overwhelming for people to find what they need. A structured website is a reliable method of pulling your website visitors towards your business. It helps people smoothly navigate around the site and organise it in their heads. The menu structure leads people towards what they want to find and what you want them to see. Studies have found the F pattern is a dominant reading behavior consistent across many different sites. Organizing your menu under main headings and subheadings is logical.

Recommend Next Step

Once people landed on your site, they often are clueless about what to do next. They exit. Instead of letting them leave your website, recommend a few follow-up options like subscribe for your newsletters or request for a demo of your product. If the user landed on your page following a blog link, you could even suggest them with topics similar to that blog. It will help you to engage the user for a little longer time on your website and increasing the possibility of him investing in your business. As a business owner the ultimate goal of your website is a conversion. Create a website built on a navigational strategy that helps you with better engagement and higher conversion rates on your site.

Shishir Kathurwar
Shishir Kumar Kathurwar is an ex-startup entrepreneur currently working on helping Business Owners in USA & Canada with their marketing needs. Kickstarted inbound marketing for multiple startups. Cracked the code of generating 750K monthly traffic in 10 months by using creative content. Launched inbound marketing of multiple Saas Startups in USA and Canada. Always up for challenges.

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