Make Your Website Easy To Navigate

 

The primary navigation is one of the most important parts of your website. The navigation bar can make or break your website but how can you guarantee your navigation is going to be user-friendly?

How your information is structured and presented won’t only affect your users but can also affect your SEO.

If you do not properly organise and label your navigation, then you will only annoy and frustrate your audience, deterring them from the website.

Here are the most common navigation mistakes estate agents make:

Navigation Mistakes

• Too much information – Not everything needs to go into the primary navigation, you should aim to keep your navigation clean and simple.

• Ridiculous long drop down menus – this goes hand in hand with too much information but long drop down menus can lead to users missing important information.

• Broken drop down menus – it is surprisingly common for an estate agency website to have a broken drop down menu. This can be very confusing and difficult to use.

• Unorganised – Your navigation should be neatly categorised in order of importance.

• Unclear labelling – All tabs and buttons should be clearly labelled. The user should never have to click a link to see where it leads.

You should always prioritise the pages you believe to be most important for the user. If you have too many pages within the primary navigation then you should think about creating space for a secondary navigation.

Navigation guidelines

• Research your users’ needs – it is easy to design a website based on your own preferences, everything on your website should be based on your audiences’ needs rather than your own.

• Ensure your navigation is consistent – the navigation shouldn’t change across your entire website.

• Keep it simple and clean – Don’t overwhelm your audience with too much information, try to only focus on the main aspects of the website.

• Include a site map – a site map will show the user and the search engines all the pages within your website.

• Be goal orientated – Don’t forget that your sites purpose is to boost your business. Don’t include the useless information that won’t generate any leads within your primary navigation, only focus on the key aspects of your website.  

The layout, order and labelling of your primary navigation really could make or break your website. Take a look at your sites navigation, ensure that you aren’t deterring your audience away from vital information and that the key pages on your website are easy to find and are clearly labelled.