Making your site easy to navigate

Help potential customers find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible.

• Design your site with a clear hierarchy.


• Use descriptive categories.


• Maintain consistent navigation.


• Use breadcrumbs to let visitors know where they are.


• Use color to distinguish between visited and unvisited links.


• Use local navigation to link to related content. Guide visitors to similar products, related products, background information, author biographies, product reviews, customer testimonials, etc.


• Provide multiple ways to find products. These can include browse, search, wizard, featured products, top-sellers, related products, etc.


• Make sure your logo is clickable and takes the user to your home page.


• Make sure each page is an effective landing page. Visitors should know exactly where they are in the site and what they are looking at. If your site promotes different items in the same category, visitors should be able to view other items easily.

Remember, most visitors will not start out on your home page. Consequently, each keyword landing page needs to function like a home page—the user should easily figure out where they are on the site.