3 Ways To Optimize Your Website Navigation
When you create your website or when you try to optimize it, you might not think about your navigation. Website navigation represents the way you propose to Web users to find a specific product, service or information on your website. When a visitor comes to your website, s.he should find very quickly what s.he is looking for.
Thanks to a well-designed menu, a great tree view and internal links, it should be very easy navigating through your website and reaching the desired product/service.
Now, if you want to optimize your navigation rapidly, you do not necessarily have to rethink your whole website. Here are some easy ways to improve your navigation for both users and search engine crawlers.
1. Think Simple: Provide Easy Access
There is one essential rule that you should always keep in mind when working on your website navigation: 3 clicks maximum. You want to provide the easiest access to your products and services.
If a Web user comes to your website with an idea in mind, s.he should be able to get what s.he wants in a minimal time and effort. How to reach this goal?
It is quite simple:
- Create a clear tree view;
- Multiply links from your home page to your main categories;
- Create landing pages that have a specific subject;
- Use filters to reduce the number of propositions.
To sum up: Be clear & concise. Provide the maximum information so that your users do not have to think too much to reach their objective. Search engine crawlers will also be more able to navigate through your whole website if you give them obvious entry points.
2. Think Organized: Create Categories
In order to organize your content, you have to create a strict hierarchy. Gather similar products or services under the same subcategory and… Gather similar subcategories under the same main category.
As your website gets more organized, you will be able to play more with SEO: optimizing the most important pages, creating links between related topics…
Just remember that your tree view and your categories must be relevant regarding the content of your website.
We all have in mind the example of an e-commerce website which sells clothes. Products are divided between men & women categories.
Then inside the women category, you can find useful subcategories: dresses, trousers, jeans, shirts, tops, sweaters…
Then, your Web users can easily access the clothes category they are looking for. They can also navigate through the different subcategories to get some inspiration.
They will actually know what they will come across with.
3. Think Linked: Develop Internal Links & Breadcrumbs
The last but not least advice is to create connection between your content. It is quite useful to create links between your different products, services or information.
When you create well-thought relations between two sisters categories, or when you propose an additional product on your product page, you create a global meaning for your website. You can highlight other pages of your website and make them known for visitors and crawlers.
Making links towards your important Web pages will improve their SEO power and their visibility. You will get more visits and conversions. It also makes sense for your customers to be able to jump from one category to another if they are related.
Your overall website goal will be more clear through your internal links network.
Moreover, thanks to breadcrumbs, you make things easy for your visitors as they can go back to the previous section fast and navigate effortlessly.
All of this will improve your customer experience and satisfaction, which can only make them come back to you. Also, search engine crawlers will be more able to highlight your content in SERPs as they can easily access it.
Thanks to these advice, you should be able to improve your navigation. These optimizations will surely improve your SEO, but do not forget… The most important one thing is to stay customer-focused.
