 Today on The Journey we're talking about 10 Best Practices for Website Navigation. We've landed on a website and been unsure of where to click to get to the page or content you were looking for in the first place, or felt overwhelmed by the cram stacks of links in the footer. Or worse, none of it works while you're on your phone. That confusion was likely created by a mix of communication, website design, and site hierarchy problems. And it takes about 50 milliseconds, that's 0.05 seconds for a user to form an opinion about your website. That determines whether they like your site or they absolutely despise it and they're just going to bounce. Holy smokes, Nealey, that's fast. And as common as it is to say, don't judge a book by its cover, websites are subject to an extreme level of snap judgment that immediately influence perceptions of credibility. Now the best and well only way to get rid of that snap judgment is to focus on your home page. Your home page needs to improve its site navigation. Before we go into our 10 tips, let's talk about why this actually matters. Now even if you are a web design pro, you may not be able to list all the best practices for website navigation just off the top of your head, but you can definitely tell when they haven't been followed. In addition to being a normal functioning website, an intuitive and well laid out navigation structure can help increase search engine rankings and drive website traffic, increase time on site and number of page views, improve the overall user experience, and improve conversions and on site sales. When you use good website navigation design, it benefits your visitors, search engines, and ultimately your business. So here are our 10 best practices for website navigation to improve your existing site structure and create a plan for your new website. And just remember, these are best practices. Use them to guide your process, but make adjustments based on what is best for your audience and your industry. And the first best practice is to start with a site map. And all the site map is just a list of pages on your website and it outlines your pages by starting with primary categories and themes and then defining pages within those main ideas. So use that site map to determine which primary navigation items you need across your main navigation footer and then all the children that live underneath it. To cater to the visitors wants and needs. You want them to be able to land on your site and quickly find the information that they're looking for, what's going to be useful to them, what is most relevant to them, what are the pages that every user needs to see. Make sure that those pages are front and center on your website. And with your navigation, you really want to make sure you use descriptive short menu titles. Long menu titles can clutter the navigation and make your website look really messy on mobile. So use short titles when possible, but cut titles down to as few words as possible as well. Really use one, maybe two words, but use enough description that users and search engines can predict what they will find on each page. It's why when you go to most sites, there's a home, there's an about, there's services, there's contact. It's nice and easy and clear with what those pages are when I go to there. Number four, limit the number of menu items in top navigation. Think of it like when someone goes to your site and there's just too many words. There's too many options. It's overwhelming. People scan websites to quickly find what they need. And you want to simplify that. And that's by decreasing the number of menu items. Exactly. And don't use more than two menu levels in the top navigation. What this is, is a dropdown that leads to another dropdown that leads to another dropdown that leads to another dropdown and it's just, just this giant mess. I've seen it and it's, it's just gross. So instead you consider using something called a mega menu. So this is, if you mouse over the menu item that has a ton of different options, it takes up the full width of the page and you can see the entire instruction. Pretty clear, nice and easy versus the mega dropdown over and over and over and hover, hover, hover. So number six, use menu headings in fat footers and mega menus. Now a fat footer is a navigation structure that's actually at the bottom of a website that includes menus and links. So if you use a fat footer or a mega menu that has a lot of links, incorporate headers to help categorize the links and make it easier for users to scan. And it goes back to that site map of having the parent and then all the children that relates to it underneath. With those different either fat footer headings or mega menus, each column will be a group. So that way I know that if I go to services, that column, everything underneath that is related to services. But one thing that I love to do to really improve my navigation and just improve my sales overall is to actually add a call to action in the top navigation. Now, if you think about your navigation and why it's so powerful to have a call to action here, if you use a sticky header so that header goes along with you wherever you go and have a call to action to either shop or contact or whatever you're trying to get visitors to do, no matter where they go on your website, they will always see that call to action and be able to click it anywhere they are. This just makes the entire user experience that much easier. So they start to scroll and realize, yep, I'm sold. I want to buy now. But they're not in a section that gives them the option to click anything. They just click that top CTA and go about their day. Well, nearly stole my point, but I'll reiterate number eight experiment with sticky top navigation menus. This is a navigation menu bar that remains at the top of the web page, even when the user scrolls. So it's a design plus, in my opinion, because it follows the user as they navigate through your site. Sorry about stealing it. I just I was on a roll. I had to keep going. But next up, you want to really consider the mobile view of your menus. Responsive website design adjusts the layouts of the website based on the screen side. Websites adjust to create an optimized experience for the user, whether they're on a small mobile device or a large desktop, you really want to keep this in mind while laying out your menus, test your menus on different screen sizes and make sure that the long menus don't take up too much space and that the hamburger menus, those little three line icons are visible and easy to access. And now what I've seen a lot of other website designers do and I do it myself personally is all sometimes create a separate navigation just for the mobile experience to make sure that it meets the needs of the people that are actually going to be using the website because what might work on the desktop, even though it's responsive, may not work with that. The logo, the call to action button and the hamburger menu. So some things might need to be adjusted there. Last but not least, use your analytics to improve as with all marketing tactics, what works for you and your brand might not work for another one. I'm a big fan of Google Analytics. So look at those results there, monitor it, help it to inform the next decision that you make. Also a really nice feature is the heat map tracking where you can actually see where your customers are going on your site. Where are they spending the most time? Where are they clicking? And then iterate to improve the user experience. Now, I want to reinforce that your website is always the work in progress. Don't just set it and forget it. Use these best practices for website navigation design to improve the user experience, boost SEO and drive more conversions and then see what other changes and updates will make your website even more effective. But if you like this video, give us a like and drop us a comment below on something that you learned today. Also, be sure to subscribe and ring that bell so you're the first to know when our next video comes out. This is a journey.