Website Navigation Essentials to Increase Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate

Posted by diamondwebsiteconversion on March 4th, 2013

What could be simpler than navigation? Well, a lot of things actually. Navigation may seem straightforward, but the truth is that it can either increase your ecommerce conversion rate or jack up your bounce rate. That’s why it’s vital for you to understand what kind of navigation makes things easier for visitors and what things turn them away.

Different Pages, Different Navigation

Did you know that not every page on your website should follow the same navigation paradigm? Home pages, product pages, and landing pages should all cater their navigation options to the needs of the visitor at that point in the conversion process. Home pages might display the broadest variety of choices, while a targeted landing page might forego navigation altogether. In addition, navigation should support your goals as a business by guiding users toward the action you want them to take.

Understanding the Navigation Funnel

One way to increase online sales using navigation is to incorporate a navigation funnel into your site design. For instance, a user is browsing your site. She clicks on the cell phone link. Once she’s on the cell phone page, you can limit her options to the various kinds of cell phones and accessories. Don’t confuse the issue by also showing mp3 players and tablets. Next, she clicks on “Accessories.” Now she’s refined her search even more. Show her options for various cell phone accessories (chargers, cases, screen protectors), but don’t show her cell phone choices. The further she moves into the navigation funnel, the fewer navigation options she should be presented with; otherwise she’ll be distracted from her goal by checking out all the other cool things you have to offer.

Of course, it’s important to display your global navigation bar across the top of the screen so that if she wants to view another category of items, she can easily do so. You can also display a breadcrumb trail that allows her to click on any previous subcategory within her primary search.

Navigation Placement

Adjusting placement of navigation controls is a common way to improve your ecommerce conversion rate. Typically, you’ll be advised to place navigation on the top or left side of the screen. These are good rules of thumb, but it’s also important to test so you can place navigation menus where they’ll be most likely to improve usability and increase website sales.

Navigation is like the steering system on your car. Yes, it’s functional, but it can also make your life harder or easier depending on whether you have manual or automatic steering. Don’t turn visitors away with confusing or distracting navigation. Keep them on task by showing them the options that will move them toward the action you want them to take.

About the Author:

Diamond Website Conversion can help you in more of your web traffic conversion into leads or customers. They work exclusively with small businesses to help them increase traffic to their website; convert that traffic into customers and to get those customers to become repeat customers. They provide website conversion optimization, conversion rate optimization, landing page optimization and landing page conversion optimization services.