Website
Navigation Tips
How to improve
website navigation
For successful results from
your website, I would have to say that the ease of
navigation for your visitors when they first visit
your website is the most important upfront web
design factor to test. Why?
Because if your customers never make it beyond the
first page of your site(your homepage), how will
they ever get to the sales page -- which is the
desired finish line, right?
Think back to a really great
site you've visited recently and how easily you
maneuvered around that website. Probably, the
homepage had links down the right-hand or left-hand
sidebar, an introduction to tell you a little about
the site and/or the product or service offered, and
no doubt the site had a purpose.
This key factor is exactly
what's missing in many sites, and because it's
missing, "visitors" seldom turn into paying
"customers."
Below are two distinct
methods you can use to test the navigation of your
website:
1. Use your web host's
website statistics. Your statistics will
relay to you how many visitors are coming to your
website, which pages they visit the most, the most
popular entrance pages and exit pages, and how many
pages were visited in your site versus how many
visitors. The statistics you will want to
concentrate on are the exit pages as well as the
number of pages/number of visitors
ratio.
By checking your exit pages,
you can find out if a large number of visitors are
exiting your website from the homepage. If the
great majority are exiting from your homepage, you
may want to make some changes on your homepage and
test different layouts and content.
Your total number of pages
visited versus the total number of visitors helps
you to determine how many pages your visitors
clicked to while visiting your site.
For example, if your total
number of pages is 1,400 and your total number of
visitors is 700 for the same period of time - such
as within one week or one day, then your total
number of pages per visitor would be 2.
The way I arrived at the
figure 2 was by simply dividing your number of
pages by the number of visitors. This tells you
that many of your visitors are at least clicking
beyond the first page entered. This could be good
or bad, depending on what type of website you have,
your product or service, and sales
presentation.
2. The second method is
to let your family members or friends visit your
website for the first time with "you"
watching from behind. You will observe their
actions and reactions to your website. They may not
tell you that anything's wrong, but you can test
your navigation simply by watching their movement.
The most important thing to
watch for is a stopping point. If your
friend/relative comes to a stopping point where
he/she does not move forward(reading or clicking),
this may be a place on your website for you to test
a different method. The only exception, of course,
would be if he/she "stops" to order your product.
:-) In that case, don't change a thing! And, by the
way, don't tell your friend that you're observing
for anything in particular.
Remember, don't just design a
website, design an effective website.
Now that you know how to test
your website's navigation, go here to read a
continuation article on the subject...
"How
to Make Your Homepage Flow"
to learn some techniques that will help turn your
visitors into paying customers.
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