One of the main causes of people abandoning websites is poor navigation.  They can't find where they want to go, so they leave, maybe never to come back. Even worse, they assume your service is as bad as your navigation and will end up on your competitor's site to find what they are looking for.  With some changes to your navigation design, you can create an experience that helps visitors find what they want as quickly as possibly, preferably with one click.

Some important things to consider for site navigation are:

  1. Let visitors navigate your site from any page - Visitors often get stuck in a site after a couple of clicks and don't know how to get back to where they came from.  A top placed navigation will allow visitors to navigate to other pages without having to go back to your home page to start over.  Make sure to include the navigation bar on all pages.
  2. Display breadcrumbs - As visitors browse your site, they often need to know how they got to the page they are on or how to get back to an earlier page.  By displaying breadcrumbs, visitors know where they came from (Ex. Home > About > Staff > Programmers)
  3. Consider adding images in the navigation to indicate navigational categories, such as product types, brands, etc. 

When developing your site navigation, thing like your customer.   After the site is built, navigate through it to make sure it is easy to get to the information that is most important on your site.  When you do this, you will be pleased with the results.