Website works best when it offers great user experience. Among various factors that are responsible for better user experience, website navigation is the foremost, so is the website design.
Bad website navigation would put you in different complications – right from lower website traffic to devastating bounce rates affecting search engine rankings. This all is obviously because of poor ‘User Experience’.
Since, current are the days of responsive website designs, you can’t afford having anything improper in its navigation. It’s been marked as one of the top factors to bring visitors to frustration, hence, to leave the website. So, check out the things that you should avoid while designing a website.
Non-Standard Navigation Styles – When a visitor stops at your website, you should be helping him to find the content he wants. Rather than, confusing or irritating him by using some non-standard website navigation style. Visitors expect seeing the navigation in these conventional ways –
- A horizontal navigation across the top
- A vertical navigation down the left hand side
So, using standard places to put navigation gives that ease of exploring the website to visitors. This of course lowers down the bounce rate, promotes visits on more pages, and much more.
Too Many Options – By placing too many options on the navigation bar you confuse the visitor; also waste his valuable time by forcing him to search for the content of his interest. Moreover, humans’ short term memory keeps only seven items. So, keep the navigation simple and easy. It should be with least possible number of items – to help visitors’ eyes to not feel frustrated scanning a complicated view.
While on the other hand, many options at one place means a large navigation menu, which hampers the main website interface. Also, it is not a good idea SEO perspective. Because, with a concise navigation, better homepage authority will flow to interior pages giving them better chances to rank good.
Using Generic Labels – Labels like Products or Services are the generic ones. They don’t communicate specific about what you deal in. So, instead of using a generic term, write the shorter names of your products or services. Since, it’s recommended to have descriptive navigation.
Moreover, terms like ‘what we do’ or ‘what we sale’ don’t tell exactly what you do or sale. So, avoiding putting all such terms in the navigation is a good idea to save visitors from extra clicks and to you from bounce rate.
With the specific names of your products or services on navigation, your website will communicate instantly with the visitors. Also, through this you get great opportunity to show your relevance to search engines. Since, your target audience will search for particular product or service using its name. So, use those keywords/ keyphrases as labels which are best as per Google Keyword Tool.
Too Long Text Labels – Though using keywords or keyphrases as labels is good SEO perspective, long texts in navigation bar should be avoided. Since, it increases the time required to process the information, so is for visitors to take decision. This may lead them to frustration as they want to spend more time on the content of their interest rather than on website navigation.
So, stay away from the things that are bad for website navigation in order to offer great User Experience to your visitors.
Facebook: Bad navigation would put your website in different complications.
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LinkedIn: Lower website traffic, devastating bounce rates can happen because of bad navigation.
Google+: Stay away from not so good things for website navigation to offer great User Experience to your visitors.
Instagram: Bad website navigation brings visitors to frustration, even can make them leave the website.
#BadInWebsiteNavigation, #BadForWebsite, #NonStandardNavigationStyles, #TooManyOptions, #UseOfGenericLabels, #TooLongTextLabels, #BadUserExperience