Is your website an experiential wonderland or are your visitors lost and confused? Anthony Monger, digital marketing consultant at Grass Roots, provides top tips to ensure successful navigation
When Alice took a dive into Wonderland, she was motivated by curiosity, but that soon gave way to frustration when she couldn’t find what she wanted. A quick glance through your web analytics report will soon tell you if your visitors are curious browsers or frantic searchers, especially if they’re visiting plenty of pages but not staying long on any of them.
Website navigation should be intuitive, with prospects easily able to find what they want. Keep the user journey short and sweet – try counting the number of clicks needed to reach key information. Set your hyperlinks to open in a new window so prospects don’t need to leave your site to view them (and they’re less likely to be blocked than a pop-up). And consider what your prospects will see along the way. Most attractions these days follow the ‘Disney model’ and position their gift shops between you and the exit, so depending on the purpose of your site, you could also position testimonials or powerful images en route.
1. Avoid a vanishing act
Ever been to a website and thought you saw something interesting, only for it to disappear? The ‘Cheshire Cat effect’ can be annoying, so consider your use of animation and rolling content carefully. Will someone have to wait five minutes before the image of interest comes back to the page? Keep cycles and movies short; or allow prospects control over them, particularly if they form a key part of your message.
It’s also worth checking to see if your content skips randomly through seemingly unrelated topics. Irrelevant or unnecessary content is frustrating and slows the user journey down. Too much content does the same – either way, the more you have on your site, the more chance there is that your prospects will miss the key information they need. Most importantly, keep the initial user journey clear, relevant and intuitive: make sure ‘need to know’ essentials are clearly differentiated from ‘bonus content’ (such as opinion pieces, articles and downloads), aimed at building engagement and loyalty once a relationship is established. Keep the essentials prominent with clear menu choices indicating next steps – bonus content can be accessed through different areas of the site, microsites or separate tabs.
2. Spell it out
What do you want your prospects to do? Not everyone reads labels as assiduously as Alice did in Wonderland, and unlike her not everyone is willing to experiment with the unknown. For example, many sites ask for information before allowing entry. Asking someone to give their details or register for more information before you’ve truly engaged them means many prospects will simply back away. If someone simply wants to browse products and services, can it be requested at a later stage when they’ve had a chance to look around first? And while we’re talking about labels, make your navigation and directions clear using a menu hierarchy that is consistent from one page to the next to help your prospects stay orientated. Hover menus will show what the options are before users even click, so they can skip intermediate steps if they want to. And adding clear, meaningful names to your images will also improve your SEO.
3. Keep up with change
However often Alice kept explaining who she was, the folks in Wonderland kept thinking she was something or someone else. Many businesses and individuals will change during their relationship with you, and if you can capture those changes based on their interactions on your site (and elsewhere), you can then keep your ecommunications up to date and relevant.
For example, if your prospect registers an interest in a product or service on their first visit, then buys it from you on the second, you’ll want to stop sending them details about that item. Instead, you’ll start inviting them to look at add-ons and upgrades – providing you’ve captured their purchase and updated their profile on your system. This is dynamic segmentation, and the good news is that it can be built into your platform.
A business’ needs change, as do individual’s preferences. Dynamic segmentation makes sense for you, and for them, and will result in more accurate messaging for better engagement. The key to success is to set the right rules at the planning stage for the technology to automate. This means defining your market segments, then the behaviours and actions for each. For example, when someone in segment A clicks on X, they will be automatically moved into segment B as a prospect. If they purchase X, they will be moved into segment C as a customer. Amazon is a good example that most of us are familiar with, using user ratings, browsing and purchases to refine your experience on an ongoing basis. Defining the process can be a complex task, usually involving brand strategists and analysts; the good news is that once the technology is set up, it’s fully automated.
