A big part of your web design, is the design and structure of the website navigation bar. This is responsible for directing website visitors to the pages they need, and the information they are looking for. But one of the most common navigation bar mistakes is offering too much choice. In all aspects of web design, from the online forms, to the page layout, less is always more. And navigation bars that use too many page links could be bringing your whole website down. So, does your navigation bar have too many options? And how can you reduce the number of pages on the navigation bar? Well, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are Manchester’s leading web design professionals. We work with a variety of companies and businesses across Manchester, and the North West, including those in Blackburn and Chorley, to provide high quality web design solutions. And we have produced this guide to everything you should know about reducing the size of your navigation bar.
Does your navigation bar have too many options?
To work out if your navigation bar has too many options, you should consider:
- Human short term memory- our short term memory can only usually hold 7 items, in general. So even 8 options on your navigation bar can become more challenging for your website visitors to focus on and choose between.
- Website bounce rate- if your website has a high bounce rate, with not many of the visitors navigating away from the home page, your navigation bar could be to blame. This is because too much choice can actually be overwhelming for website visitors, who will just leave if they are not sure where to navigate to on your website.
How can you reduce the number of links from your navigation bar
There are a number of ways that you can effectively reduce the number of links from your navigation bar. These include:
- Adding in page link buttons- in page link buttons can be useful for taking website visitors to pages related to the content they just read, For example, if you have a page for shoes, a link to the page about shoe laces could be designed visually to add style, and practicality to the shoe page. And this would mean that the shoe lace option could be removed from the top navigation tier.
- Using mega menus- mega menu’s organise lots of pages into related blocks, that are accessed through a drop down choice on the navigation bar. This will allow users to clearly see which pages are relevant to which section, and reduces the amount of visual disorganization that can occur when you have multiple categories and sub categories. These can even contain images to add visual interest and style.
- Add a sitemap- if you have too many pages, and you simply need to get rid of some of the least important ones from the navigation bar, you should consider adding a sitemap. This can help link savvy website users to any page on your website, with just two clicks. A search bar could also be used too.
For more information or advice, get in touch with the professionals today here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.