Navigating to the right page on your site is a pain for visitors. They spend time scrolling through menus. Or, they're clicking links that go nowhere and filling out forms to find what they’re looking for.

But it doesn’t need to be this way! We’ve got 9 ways you can make site page navigation easier for your visitors. Keep reading to uncover the secrets!

1. Plan Your Route

Create an index page that lists all the pages on your site. Visitors have easy access to alternate routes and a way of locating pages. You can place your main navigation in a sidebar or up top for those who need access.

Think of the home page as the entrance to a museum where you have a map of where to go next. Your visitors can have a better understanding of not only where they can go but where they need to be.

2. Add a Search Bar

If the site is complex, adding a search bar is another way to help your readers navigate your custom web design with ease.

Suppose there are lots of pages or a lot of content on a single page. Add a site search that allows people to search for keywords and topics to create a better experience.

3. Consistency is Key

Make sure that you keep the navigation links consistent throughout the site. Hence, people know what they’re looking for if they reach your site from another source or search engine.

Keep navigation links accessible wherever appropriate, otherwise, you'll find your customers switch off. The highest-quality affordable web designers will give you the correct advice on how to set up your navigation and make it user-friendly.

4. Use Conventional Text

Make sure you use text rather than images for navigation links. This is most important as you start to include drop-down menus or nested links.

Your website becomes more accessible since search engines can read it. And, for blind users and people who are using a screen-reader, it makes it easier for text-to-speech readers to navigate as well.

5. Clear Signposting for Home

Creating a drop-down menu can get quite lengthy. So, have a visible “Home” link at the top of each drop-down menu. Or, you can embed the home page link in your logo. That way, visitors can always go back to the page they were reading before they looked at the drop-down menu.

Do this even if you have more navigation links in your main website navigation bar because people often look for these shortcuts from within web pages.

6. Break Up Blocks of Text with Images and Video

We mentioned using text conventions for site navigation itself. Still, when reading through the body of the webpage, reams of text can become a chore.

So as we've done here, write in concise sentences and paragraphs, and don't forget to use images and text that allow others who struggle to read to understand the site.

Especially if your website is a blog site. Know the different types of websites and understand your end goals.

7. Link Within Content

When writing your content, don’t forget to include links to related topics within the page's content. This creates an intuitive, helpful website in which visitors can find information at speed without leaving your site.

Internal links throughout the content help the reader navigate to a relevant piece of content and help the search engines crawl your site and sitemap to understand how the site looks (think about "web" in World Wide Web!).

External links do a similar thing: they help build trust in your website and others, helping the reader with information that isn't available on your website. You can also include a Table of Contents that helps your readers find a particular part of a long piece of text.

8. Make Your Page Accessible and Responsive

Keep a version of your website that’s easy to browse for anyone and everyone – an accessible version of your site, even if this is not what you use most of the time. Or, a similar experience can be had for different languages, which allows the reader a better user experience in their native language.

We hinted at this earlier, but make sure your website is as responsive and as accessible as possible for everyone. PageSpeed Insights is a great way to check how mobile-friendly your site is. Make sure there are options for your audience to have a better experience moving around the site.

Plugins such as Helperbird are brilliant for allowing dyslexic users to customize the experience to their requirements. Text-to-speech widgets are also a great way to engage visitors in your content.

9. Test Your Website On Everything

Of course, not everyone uses Google Chrome. So make sure your website is well-optimized across the board. For example, it's no good optimizing your cryptocurrency blog for Bing when all your visitors use Brave Browser or Opera.

Likewise, if you find most of your users coming from a tablet experience (such as linking from a game ad), then make sure your website looks good in the 4:3 aspect ratio that tablets use.

Keep Page Navigation Simple

An accessible and awesome user experience is simple to set up but requires effort to maintain on an ongoing basis. There are no quick wins here!

But, if you’re serious about your online presence and want a competitive edge in this competitive marketplace, then taking a few steps to ensure that your page navigation is fluid and engaging for all visitors will help you get there.

If you're fed up with trying to find answers to your web problems get a free quote from us today. We're more than happy to discuss how we can help make your small business website design as easy to navigate as we are!