1. Make it clear
When a website visitor doesn’t know what to expect when clicking a link, or how to easily find what they are looking for, confusion results. Reduce confusion by designing your website’s navigation to be easy for visitors to understand. Abercrombie & Fitch’s website provides an example of this concept. Their navigation is easy to understand from the first moment a visitor arrives at their website.
2. Stay consistent
I am sure you have been to websites where it looks like part of their navigation was tacked on as an afterthought or it just doesn’t belong. This lack of consistency works to reduce trust on the part of site visitors, additionally, it reduces the quality of the user experience. If something just looks tacked on to you, it will most likely look the same or worse to your customers. The nice, clean navigation of Bouguessa’s website is consistent and helps improve visitors’ experiences while on their site.
3. Keep it concise
Avoid creating menus with too many items. It is best if you can limit the number of items included as part of your menu to seven. Having fewer items to choose from is better for your website’s visitors. It creates less mental strain on the part of your visitors as they are making decisions and increases the chances that they will move forward. Research has shown that the human brain uses chunking as a method to improve recall. By breaking data up into relevant groups or chunks, it allows us to understand and remember it better. This is an especially effective technique for larger websites that need more than seven menu items. By breaking menu items up into groups you will be helping your website visitors. Remember that each time you remove an item from your menu or an element from your page; you are making everything else a little more visually prominent. When you remove something, you make other items more likely to be seen and clicked on. Carefully evaluate what you really need as part of your website and be willing to remove the items you don’t need to streamline and improve the experience. The Olson Kundig website provides a great example of a website with a streamlined navigation experience.
4. Use a flat architecture
Great navigation begins with a well thought out information architecture (IA).As you consider the organization of your website you will want to keep the architecture as flat as possible. Allow your website visitors to reach any page within one or two clicks. When you have fewer levels it is quicker, easier and less confusing for your customers to get to where they want to be. Limit the number of levels to help make navigating simple for your visitors. To help organize your site, separate pages into groups and instead of nesting groups within groups within groups, look to create the flattest organization possible. Consolidate content where appropriate, perhaps even considering grouping the pages differently than you currently are doing to enable this, but make sure that your groupings are consistent with the how your customers view your products. Odd groupings that don’t make sense to users will not help you, even if they help flatten your website hierarchy. Use visual design to help users understand the hierarchy when they are looking at your menu. Using font styles, sizes, colors, and whitespace can help visitors understand navigation levels. Clearly differentiate secondary navigation in a way that separates it from primary navigation in a harmonious way.Samella Garcia
Samella Garcia works as an Integration Manager for UX Phoenix. She has 8 years’ experience developing mobile applications and web sites that focus on UX. Samella has a passion for user experience projects, coding, digital technology and hiking.
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