What to put in your websites top navigation bar

When designing & building your website, you need to understand the importance of your navigation and the effect it can have on your conversion and sales. You have to make it as clear as humanly possible. You don’t want potential customers confused and leaving your site because they just gave up.

We want your new potential customers to know exactly where to go, do it quickly and easily. 

The distraction epidemic 

Today we’re all more distracted than ever, we watch TV programs whilst playing games on our phones (OK that may just be me, Tetris is my bag), we’ll be doing a task for work and suddenly stop mid-sentence and start browsing Facebook. 

My particular fave is when the radios on whilst I’m working, the DJ talks about someone I don’t know about and then I’ll start looking them up on Wiki, then google the film they were in, who wrote that film, who were they married to and the rabbit hole gets deeper and deeper…. 

See, what I mean... I even got distracted from the initial point i was making! … which is ‘How do we keep our audience/clients attention, when we might only have it for a few seconds?’

Top Line, what is it your clients are looking for when they come to your site? You need to have things so clearly defined on your site.

What people look for in your Navigation 

• What you do

• Who you are

• How to work with you  / Where to buy the product you’re selling

• Are there any resources to get to know you more (this could be a blog or podcast also)

• How they can contact you

This is a good example for how your ‘site map’ (the pages on your site) should look:

• Homepage

• About

• Work With Me 

• Shop Now (or Dresses/Women’s Clothing/Digital Products etc)

• Blog | Podcast etc

• Contact

Keep it simple! 

Here’s an example of how I could potentially confuse my customers by rewording my navigation buttons as shown below...

Homepage    Start Here

About    Biography (personally I find the word ‘biography’ too formal)

Work With Me   I’m All In or Transform Your Instragram   (my package names)

Blog | Podcast etc   Liz’s Biz Tips

Contact    Hit me up

If there are just two ways to work with you (and it’s pretty clear what they are without using 3-4 words) then you could switch out ‘Work With Me’ for (eg) ‘Photography’ and ‘Website Design’.. 

Using the Work With Me tab as an example again, you may;

• Have the different ways to work with you listed on the one page

• Write an introduction into what you do and then have links to your offerings which open up in separate pages 

• Create a drop down folder from the Work With Me tab, showcasing your different offers

I remember a marketing guru once telling me, you have to break it down as if you’re explaining it to a child. Just because you get it, doesn’t mean someone else does. 

I remember the CEO of a top marketing company once saying to me ‘you need to explain things to your clients as if they were 12 years old and don’t know what you do’. 

Design Tips

Make sure that your navigation is in a clear to read font. Don’t use a handwritten stylised font, because you think it looks pretty and is on brand - if you think it’s not super super clear to read don’t use it! 

Personally, I prefer capital letters that have a slightly larger spacing between the letters than usual.   

So go forth and make sure your top navigation bar is as simple as can be and if you have a friend who may need this post in their life, please share the link with them.