Top Website Navigation Practices for Seamless User Experience: Do’s And Don’ts

Websites built with proper navigation help visitors with easy surfing and viewing the website's different pages. On the basis of better navigation, users benefit from a good user experience that ultimately converts them to long-term customers. This article is all about being acquainted with the types of practices to implement for the improvement of website navigation. In order to develop an intuitive and user-friendly website, we have covered a list of do’s and don’ts of website navigation design.

What Should Be DONE?

First, let us present the list of DO's :

1. DO Maintain A Simple Outlook

Users favour using a straightforward navigation menu they can easily comprehend. The navigation menu should comprise the most important categories. Users are overwhelmed and confused when they have excessive options.

2. DO Use Descriptive Labels

Using clear labels detailed for each category in the navigation menu is mandatory. Helping the users to know what should they anticipate when they are clicking a link, further helps with the website's SEO. For instance, framing as "Our Products/Services" or "View Our Product Categories" or "Take Our Services" in place of just "Products" or "Services".

3. DO Add A Call To Action (CTA)

A CTA button added in the header improves website navigation. This tried and tested technique encourages visitors to buy from your website from whichever page they should be converted. Usually, the CTAs are placed in the form of banners since they look more professional to get their attention.

The CTA banner's contents or the button is very crucial. Its key purpose is attracting customers. So, content should be smartly framed in a conversational tone, since it precisely helps to effectively increase user engagement.

4. DO Use Dropdown Menus

Arranging subcategories and keeping a tidy navigation menu using dropdowns is considered user-friendly. For many subcategories, dropdown menus work best. Furthermore, these facilitate quick access to specific web pages on a website for users.

5. DO Emphasize Accessibility

All visitors should be able to easily access and use the website navigation, including the persons with disabilities. So, to make the website navigation more accessible, Accessible Rich Internet Application or ARIA attributes should be used. ARIA attributes are the HTML elements used for improving content accessibility for screen readers and other assistive technologies.

6. DO Test and Iterate

Frequently testing navigational layout and then making changes to respond to user comments and analytics, makes the website more appreciative to the users. This helps in improving the website's performance and user experience by means of better navigation. User feedback help a lot to learn about how the navigation works and how improvements should be made.

7. DO Use Anchor Links for Navigation

Audiences can be made to visit the other website pages when the navigational links are added in between the content. Through this creative technique done smartly, the navigational links can be placed on the important words that are used in between the contents. Using these anchors wisely implies they have been used naturally in the sentence.

Additionally, to let the users know which links will be browsed, changing their colours in colours in the content makes sense. Using light colours for such links is the best recommendation since these can be easily distinguished in the content.

8. DO Use Breadcrumb

The chief reason for using breadcrumb navigation is it shows the user's location instantly while providing a clear visual representation of the hierarchy and orientation of the website. Often the users have to struggle to identify a website's overall structure. The breadcrumb trail comes as a solution to this challenge and allows easy navigation from a particular page to different parent pages.

Other than the primary navigation menus, having breadcrumb navigation is crucial for the users to easily find what they are willing to have and spend more time on the website.

9. DO Use Contrasting Colors to Stand Out in Visibility For Improved Website Navigation

With the right colour palette, the website's UX improves the website's UX and finally increases conversions and engagement. Good colour contrast adheres to digital accessibility legal standards and enables a positive user experience on the website. Different emotions are triggered by different colours.

A powerful way to increase conversions is Color Contrast Optimization. For instance, high-contrast visuals with white backgrounds and bold CTA buttons push the users to take a desired action. Leveraging colour psychology incredibly increases CTR and conversions. Strategically using the colour schemes and meeting the minimum contrast requirements helps in increasing conversions, readability and engagement easily.

10. Website Navigation on Mobile UI

Mobile-friendly websites, also with a responsive design are planned specifically and structured to be well presented on a Mobile device. Users find these websites easy to read and navigate when they are viewing on a smaller screen. A mobile-friendly website is automatically adjusted to the device type. The text size changes to fit within the screen, Through resizing, an easy read can be presented.

The navigation menu will be compressed into an easy-to-manage dropdown menu.

What Should be AVOIDED?

Now time for all that should not be done.

1. DON’T Ever Use Unfamiliar Icons

True that adding icons to the navigation menu is helpful, but the icons that the users would quickly recognize should be used. If other unfamiliar icons are used, then users will have a tough time making out what each icon is standing for. Becoming perplexed, when they find a help center icon has been represented by a question mark.

2. DON’T Use Any Ambiguous Labels

Refrain from using ambiguous or vague labels which are not accurately describing the contents they are linking to. Due to this, the users are sure to become perplexed and frustrated. For instance, describing the company by labelling the H1 as "Our Journey" other than "About Us" would convey wrong information to the users.

3. DON’T Use Excessive Categories

Once the users face difficulties in finding out what they need to search when the website presents a lot of categories. So, the best is to group the categories under general headings and limit the number of categories.

4. DON’T Keep the Important Information Hidden

By no means should the important information be kept hidden within the website or in submenus. All the crucial pages on the website should be easily accessible from the navigation menu. Users should easily locate important details such as contact information or pricing details.

5. DON’T Overlook Mobile Navigation

The navigation menu should be optimized for smaller screens since mobile usage is going high. It's a good option to use mobile-friendly design patterns or a hamburger menu. The hamburger menu appears as three horizontal lines on mobile devices when the menu button is tapped. On smaller screens, accessing the navigation menu is simpler, and it is even a space-saving option.

6. DON’T Show A Lot Of Pop-Ups

Although using pop-up boxes is a favorable practice to direct visitors to other pages yet excessive usage on web pages could render inverse results. Audiences are irritated when the same popup boxes keep on appearing every time on every window. It results in the users leaving the site by creating a negative impression rooting out bad user experience.

So, try using these pop-ups in boxes in a particular way so the visitors will not be frustrated. The pop-up boxes can be specifically placed on the sales-oriented pages, or pages where special discounts are running. This is a perfect balance for showcasing pop-ups only on specific pages.

?