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Tip: Step Back and Analyze Your Navigation Every 6-12 Months |
Your navigation is one of the most important ways that visitors get around on your website – and you want to make sure it is working for both you and your visitors.
At the beginning of our projects, we spend time developing a website navigation based on site goals and the needs of our target audience. Because of that, sometimes our clients feel like the website navigation is set in stone – but it’s not! It’s a good idea to take a step back and analyze your navigation every 6 – 12 months as your priorities change and you get more data about how visitors interact with your site.
Below, Schipulite Jennie Lane outlines steps for reviewing data from Google Analytics to make decisions about restructuring your navigation, including some real world before and after examples of a recent navigation restructure we went through.
5 Tips for Restructuring Your Website Navigation
- Use Analytics to determine which content is most important to visitors
- Make sure the most important items are top level nav items
- Order items so the most important items read left to right
- Use a Utility Navigation for Logistics that don’t need to be in the main nav
- Use Descriptive Words in Titles
3 Reports in Google Analytics to Review when Revisiting Your Navigation
- Top Content – To see what content is most popular with users
- Visitor Flow – To see how Visitors are navigating through your site
- In Page Analytics – To see which Links get the most clicks from your homepage
Your website should be flexible to change as your marketing priorities evolve. Remember – Making even small changes to the navigation can make a big difference for your visitors!