Which way do I go? How website navigation can make or break a sale

Niche Marketing PR Can Help You Ensure Your Customers Do Not Get Lost While Visiting Your Website

No matter how well-written or persuasive a website’s content may be, it will not effectively convert prospects into customers if the prospects cannot find the content they want easily and quickly. If prospects must browse through several pages that do not pertain to their goal in visiting your website, or if they must read through several paragraphs of text to find the information they need, chances are they will give up before even getting to that information. To prevent this from happening and costing you the opportunity to make a sale, you need to ensure your website is easy to navigate. Some methods of accomplishing this include:

• Giving your website a search field. A search field allows users to type terms that describe what they are looking for into a text field, and then searches the website for those terms.
• Using simple button or link titles. Your company logo is not an obvious link back to your home page, though many websites use it as such. For as little confusion as possible, you should always have simple links or buttons that read, “home,” “about us,” “services,” and the like.
• Avoiding dead ends. Every page of your site should have a way to navigate to another page without the user having to resort to pressing his or her web browser’s “back” button. If a page of your site is missing a page or if it cannot be found, the user’s web browser will display a 404 error. To prevent this from causing the user to leave the site, we can create a custom-designed 404 page that will direct users back to your home page and other popular pages on your website.
• Link promotions directly to the product being advertised. Many banner and e-mail advertisements simply direct people to a company’s homepage, forcing them to navigate through the entire site on their own to find the product or service featured in the advertisement. Many will not take the effort to do this, and simply press their browser’s “back” button or close their browser altogether. At Niche Marketing PR, we help ensure that all of your promotional content, both on and off your website directs people to the content they wish to view.

Navigation and SEO

Navigation also plays a role in your website's search rankings. Each page of your website that links to another page on your site casts a vote with search engines for the quality of the linked page. If the page from which you are linking happens to have a high page rank, it can also transfer part or all of that rank to the pages it links to.

This can be a good thing or a bad thing for your online marketing efforts depending on your site's navigational structure. Haphazardly linking pages together can end up diluting an otherwise strong page rank on a high-traffic page and redistributing it to less-viewed pages that don't bring in many sales. Creating a navigational structure designed to make sure your pages with the highest customer conversion rates also get the highest page rank is referred to as siloing.

How Niche Marketing PR can Improve Your Navigational Structure

We will work with you to determine the pages and topics on your site that have the highest customer conversion rates, and help you build an easy-to-use silo navigational structure designed around those topics. Call us today at (757) 788-8157 for a complimentary consultation!

Website Optimization > Website Navigation