Effective Navigation Design: Industrial Product Sites
It’s a short post today. In thinking about usability, it occurred to me that a previous post about usability in industrial web sites could use some expansion. So…in addition to the actual design of industrial product pages, today we’ll throw out some goodies about navigation structuring, which is equally important.
Many of the industrial web sites we build are designed for the industrial distributor needing an effective, search engine friendly solution to selling their products online. Whether this involves an ecommerce solution or not, given the ample amount of content and multi level category/product pages this often involves, things can get messy, and quick. Special care must be paid to usability in order to safe guard (and promote) conversion.
“Navigation Design plays a primary role in the effectiveness and usability of a website.”
This your content we’re talking about here.In talking about how to structure a navigation for ease of use, and ultimately increased conversion, we first must make this point - yell - this point: Your navigation is the bloodline of your website: it is literally the road map your visitors use to find - and buy - your products.
Plainly, your navigation is really, really, really important.
Here are some quick questions and tips to bear in mind when considering how a navigation re-structuring could help your conversions as well as your search engine positioning:
1. Ask your self — what are my customers searching for?
Believe it or not, thorough key word research can play a vital role in planning your navigation. Are people searching by theme? By part number? By company name? For example, a company that sells robotic palletizers may offer specific types of palletizers and parts for use in various applications. But if company finds that more people are searching for a products specific application (in the event they dont know what an approirate product is) it would make sense for their navigation to be presented congruently. Find out what they want to know, and them provide them with that information in a streamlined, intuitive way.
2. Ask yourself — What do I want my visitors to do?
Many industrial product sites have e-commerce capability, and a surprising many still do not, relying heavily on strong calls to action. In either case, you know you want your visitors to buy your products. Does that mean clicking on a landing page? Calling a telephone number? Requesting more information? Whatever your conversion goal, the information that your customers need in order to make a justified purchase confidently, should always be presented first. Your visitors care less about “about us” and “shipping information” than they do about the actual problems they came to your site to solve.
3. Think like your customers, not like your company.
If I am a visitor looking for a specific kind of pump, I want to be able to quickly find that pump on your site, easily garner the information I need to make the purchase, and feel confident in taking the next step. If I am looking for a pump for a specific application, but I do not know specifically what kind of pump I need, I need to be able to quickly ascertain this information so that I can buy. If you were thinking like your company, you might segment your navigation into terms only you can understand…such as ‘example pump company ULTIMATE pump-series’ followed by ‘example pump company SUPER pump series’ etc. This might make sense under normal conventions, but to your visitors it means sifting through tons of pages to find what they want…and statistically, you’ve got 4 seconds and 3 clicks to grant their wish before they leave your website.
For further tips on designing a web site for conversion; an informative, in depth perspective on “driving conversions in B2B Search optimization” can be found at : B2B SEO