WS - How Poor Navigation in Your Website Can Ruin a Visitor's Experience

Research by Google has suggested that if a webpage takes more than half a second to load then up to 20% of the traffic could be lost. Other research shows us that a page taking 2 seconds to load will make almost half the visitors hit the back button whilst two thirds of users will leave a slow loading page.

But, what has this to do with navigation? Quite simply - a lot. It teaches us something about the people that are opening our websites and reading our content. That is that they are impatient to get at the information they want to see. Grab them in the first half a second and you have a reader. Fail and you could have a bounce.

The other problem with navigation is that although drop down windows and so on can look fancy, they are more difficult for some people to use and annoying to others. They also throw onto the page far too many options for the average use.

A complicated menu structure can mean that the user, who is typically just darting around the page, will miss the button leading them to where they want to go. Maybe they do not realise to activate the drop down or the 50+ choices are just too many for them to read.

You want to make sure that all of the main navigation that makes up your website is clearly available on the screen the moment it opens. If someone goes to your home page and the link they need to click is hidden in a button within the text way past the fold, they are unlikely to find it. They might just click a few other pages to see if they can find what they want, but you have lost their full interest. They are starting to look elsewhere and will almost certainly go to another site for what they want, just because you did not hand it to them on a plate.

For the best results just present them with a few options in a clean and clear navigation menu. Half a dozen options, which each lead to as many more can easily guide a visitor to where they want to be in a few clicks. Just make sure that they can escape to the home page at any time.

Cluttered, hidden and confusingly too many options will all cause your visitor to lose interest and get lost in the pages. This will ultimately make them look elsewhere, a totally ruined experience of your website.

Source: Ezine

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