Make the most of your author website’s navigation
This might not seem like the most exciting topic but it’s something I’ve been chatting about a lot with my clients. If you’re not entirely sure what your website navigation is, let me first clear that up: it’s the page menu that you see on every page. Usually it’s at the top of the site (as it is on my site) but sometimes you’ll see it to one side (usually the left).
The navigation is used to help visitors navigate around your website and click on its different pages. However, contrary to popular belief, it’s not the only way that visitors can navigate around your site, and I’ll go into this in a bit more detail later on…
There are quite a few generally accepted ‘dos and don’ts’ when it comes to your author website’s navigation, so today I’m going to run through the main points, and if you already have a website, hopefully this will be helpful to you, and may highlight some changes you might consider making.
1) Less is more
This is the biggie! Contrary to popular belief, you don’t want a ton of options in your navigation. Many authors think they have to put links to every single page of their website in the navigation, and are a bit surprised when I explain that actually, no, you don’t!
Here’s an interesting way of thinking about it; when a visitor comes to your website, what do you want them to do? What’s your main priority?
Whatever that is, we want to focus as much attention on that, and as little on the other options as possible. This ensures that visitors don’t get distracted, but do what we want them to do (in the nicest way possible!).
So for example, on my website you will see I only have four options in my navigation: About, Services, Blog and Get in touch.
You might also notice that Get in touch is a button, rather than a link like my other navigation options. This is because it’s the thing I most want people who visit my site to do – I want them to get in touch!
So I’ve made this stand out more, in the hope that anyone thinking of working with me will easily find it and click to visit my contact page.
I have lots of other pages on my website, but these don’t need to be in my main navigation. For example, my privacy policy – an important page, but not a huge priority for me to get people to visit, so it lives in my footer instead.
So, think about the pages you put in your navigation. Make them the ones you really want people to visit, as people will be drawn to these options first and foremost, and you don’t want them to get distracted.
There’s a general rule that you shouldn’t have more than 6 items in your navigation. If you do, it just becomes overwhelming to your website visitor.
So, as always, keep it simple. Minimise those options, delete any superfluous pages and combine any pages that you can (as I’ve mentioned before, people are more than happy to scroll online these days, so you don’t need to worry about pages seeming really long).
2) Take your Home page out of your navigation
You really really don’t need a link to ‘Home’ in your navigation. These days, everyone knows that if you click on the title of a website (or its logo), this will take you back to the homepage. So, if you have a ‘Home’ link in your nav, get rid of it! It’s just taking up space.
3) Don’t use drop down menus
Oh god, I confess, I used to be terrible for this! I thought drop downs were so cool – that it looked super efficient and organised to have ‘filed’ my pages by sections.
But the accepted wisdom is that drop downs are really un-user friendly. Because once a visitor to your site has gone to click on a link in your navigation, they have made a decision. By then providing them with a drop down menu all you’re doing is confusing them, and forcing them to make another decision.
It’s like a hiccup in their thought process.
So again, combine any pages you can (if you have more than one book, you can put all your books on the same page but under different sections), and get rid of the drop downs.
4) Make the most of your footer
Got pages you don’t want in your main navigation but that you can’t get rid of? Then put them in your footer! This is a really under-used area on lots of websites, but it’s the perfect way to neatly store links to less popular pages.
For example, in my footer I have links to my FAQs as well as my T&Cs. Both useful pages, but not ones that warrant a place in my top navigation.
5) Link internally
So, if you’ve only got four links in your main navigation, how do you get people to visit all the pages on your website?
The answer is to link pages internally. Think about a ‘visitor path’ or the way in which you want people to flow through your website.
A typical visitor path for an author website might be something like this:
Homepage > About page > Books page > Pre-order link (your visitor leaves the website to pre-order your book from a retailer)
So on your homepage, you want to direct people to find out more information about you. And so from the body of content on your homepage, you might link to your About page.
On your About page, you talk a bit about yourself, your writing career and then your latest release, and at the end of this you might have a link to your Book page, so readers can find out more about the book.
Once on your Books page, readers can see all the lovely quotes and testimonials about your book, as well as lots of helpful links or buttons (the bigger the better!) to direct them to buy your book! This is when they click off your site and visit a retailer and hopefully make a purchase.
This is a pretty basic example, but it’s worth making sure that on every page of your website, at the end of each ‘chunk’ of content, there’s a very clear link or call to action telling visitors where to go next. And make sure you link within your own site as much as possible – this is really good for SEO too!
Hope this article was helpful and has encouraged you to think about your website’s navigation and how to simplify things. If you’d like any more help or tips, as always, please do get in touch or leave a comment below!
