Website navigation is not usually linear. People usually take a more stream of consciousness sort of route on websites. This is why your Website design needs to be really good, so that people go where you want. The visitor always can be overwhelmed or confused by information and click out. So make sure you give them good direction.
To cover all your bases, you might be tempted to put a link to every page on your site right upfront on the home page. This might work, but you do not always want them to be able to find everything right away and go at your content from every angle. You want to lead your visitors by the nose, and give them a beginning and an end to their experience on your site.
To maximize your conversions, you want to lead your visitors to the places you want them to visit on your site. Your website should consist of several short paths with a defined beginning and a defined end. Google Analytics refers to this as ‘goal tracking.’ It might look kinda like this:
- Home/landing page – Blog post 1 – Product page – Contact Us – Thank you page
Or it could look like this:
- Home page – Order form – Thank you page
On all of these pages on your website, you want a call to action that is clear. Tell your user what to do. To do this, you want these pages to have few distractions. Cut out anything that might stop the user from doing the action you want.
Also, think about your page design in terms of how your users got there? By search engine? Link inside your site? Advertising? Email? Then you need to design the page so they know what to do, based upon where they came from. You want to map out visually the beginning and end of your visitor’s experience on your website.
So, a good web design isn’t merely about good color, spatial arrangement and images. A great website uses these elements, but thinks a lot about the user experience and how success is defined when the person comes to the site.