Usability and Navigation Optimisation

Consistency in design, navigation and branding and clear and intuitive layout of information and products can be crucial elements in creating a positive online customer experience. Your site must be organised so that your visitors never lose their way searching for the information they need. Is this the case with your site? If not, there must be some problems with website navigation. Left unfixed, it can be catastrophic; luckily, we are navigational experts.

The process

Usability and navigation optimisation is always preceded by the phase of testing, otherwise we could not know whether your site needs restructuring. We perform a review of the site and find out what usability and navigational problems it has. Our usability experts browse your site like ordinary visitors, download images and pages, click menu, etc. and see if everything works properly and check that it is easy to navigate and reach necessary data.

Then we generate a report on usability and navigation issues based upon the preceding testing. These are some of parameters we check for:

• good accessibility of the site to all users using any device;
• cross-browser compatibility of the site;
• simple and intuitive navigation;
• no frames;
• meaningful alternative descriptions for all pictures provided via the alt attributes;
• clarity and predictability of all text links;
• conciseness and clarity of page titles;
• links on a current page should not be self-referential;
• the company logo on pages except the homepage should provide a link to the home page;
• no pop-ups on a user's screen unless it is absolutely necessary;
• complexity of backgrounds;
• arrangement of navigation elements.

This analysis will show how your site is actually used, what trouble points are there and what can repel your visitors.

Then we estimate these and other parameters which we have analysed and see what should be improved. Whether you are going to make amendments yourself or leave this job to us, we make a detailed plan of activities, explaining what has to be changed and why. If you charge your IT staff with this we are ready to collaborate and keep consulting them during the whole project.

See also: Usability Review Service |.

If you don't have your own resources to implement this task we are ready to take responsibility for improving your site's usability and navigation. Having agreed all activities and after receiving your details to log into admin toolbar, we can work on the coding at your site and amend your navigation. We will certainly keep you informed of everything that will be done to your site by detailed reporting of our activities.

Another part of navigation optimisation is the SEO side of the issue. Apart from being one of the most important usability elements, links are also a powerful SEO weapon, so we pay special attention to anchor texts (the text between the <a> and </a> tags). Whenever it is reasonable and logical, we will change the anchor text of inner navigation links to contain your predefined targeted keywords. Left navigation bars, footer navigation, breadcrumbs (navigation paths) and other standard navigation elements offer us great help where search engine optimisation is involved. But in doing so, we never sacrifice usability and the professional looks of your site. When the keywords don't fit as a part of anchor texts, we do not enforce them. Site visitors always come first.