Imagine that you are looking for a specific product or service that you market. Now take a look at your website. Does your navigation make it easy to find the relevant item? Is it easy to understand? Is everything in the right order?
Here is a simple navigation bar:
Home
About
Services (or Products)
Blog
Contact
Notice that there are only 5 options.
in general terms, fewer is better.
An upper limit would be 9 items.
Use drop downs to reveal other options.
Ensure that the menu works well on smartphones and other mobile devices.
If the customer hasn’t visited your site before, they will be looking for something. If they can’t find it quickly, they will disappear.
Visitors will spend a few seconds looking for what they’re after. If it is buried or difficult to find, you’re making them work too hard and they will go elsewhere.
My first book was about writing words for websites. During the research for this book, I looked at hundreds of website navigation bars.
By the way, there is a trend away from navigation bars altogether.
