How Website Navigation Can Boost Your Sales

A website is an amazing tool to market your business but to be effective, it needs to be optimised. One of the most important factors to this optimisation is your website's navigation.

Imagine your website is a large department store and you've just walked into it for the first time, you're looking for something specific but how do you get there?

Your website is no different to consumers and when they first enter your site, you need to make sure they can easily find exactly what they need. If you're a navigation expert, you can even direct them to pick up a little bit extra while they're there.

Use these tools and steps to boost your website's navigation and improve your sales and efficiency:

 

Navigation Tools

The dropdown:

The dropdown is the simplest way to access a business's services. It's a fantastic tool for website visitors to see what you offer and find what they're looking for.

The hidden home button:

Many websites have abandoned the home button altogether with users accessing their sites on a wide range of devices with varied resolutions.

Using your brand name or head banner as a home redirect is a space-efficient way to help users return to your home screen.

While we often suggest keeping a home button to make navigation clear to visitors, it's a great idea to offer the alternative too.

The footer directory:

Opposingly, on the bottom end of your pages, the footer is a great place to place your website directory.

The footer directory should have your contact information and links to key pages to your website as it's going to be on every page.

Breadcrumbs:

If you've got amazing content, it's going to be easy for website visitors to get lost in. By the time they've followed links and learned more about your products and services, they may have lost where they started and forgotten what they were looking for in the first place.

Breadcrumbs are a great way to offer visitors a way to turn around and return to pages they've come from without hitting the back button or exiting your website entirely.

The help agent:

Going back to the department store analogy, there might be a service desk to direct you where you need to go.

Websites aren't any different and many offer a help agent that customers can message to find the services they're after.

Accessibility:

With nearly one in five Australians living with some form of accessibility, it's important that your website is navigable to all visitors. Click here to read more about making your website more navigable.

The key points to making sure all Australians can navigate your website would be that you provide:

• Navigation with use of keyboard alone
• Has text alternatives like voice options
• Provide options to customise the sizes of text on the site

 

Navigation Tips

Keep it simple:

The easiest way to keep your visitors on track is to make sure they don't have to jump through too many hoops to find what they're after.

You can cut down on the number of pages on your website by grouping products and services together and invite them to find out more by contacting you.

The contact us:

Similar to the help agent, the contact us is an out for customers to find out more about your services without needing to navigate and read through pages. 

By often offering customers the chance to reach out to you, you have the opportunity to make more personal relationships with your customers by engaging with them directly.

The upsell:

You can upsell your products and services on your website by offering to find out more options on pages that link.

Even if you're not trying to sell products, you can upsell more information to your customers. Lead them towards learning more about your other products and services by offering them the option often.

Make it easy to make the purchase decision:

Promising that this is the final use of the department store analogy, imagine that you've found exactly what you were looking for... How do you find the register to purchase it?

You should give your visitors a convenient option to purchase your product like the Bloomtools Shopping Cart or an obvious link to booking your service.

 

How to Make an Easy to Navigate Website

Customising your website can be a pretty daunting task, if you'd like professional help you can book a free no obligation consultation or by calling 1300 399 399 and we can help you determine your next steps.

If you've already got a website and you're not sure if it's navigable enough for your visitors, consider using our free website grader to inspect your pages and determine how you can get more leads and customers.