Navigating Success: Best Practices when Building your Menu for Intuitive Website Navigation

In the digital realm, where attention spans are short and choices are overwhelming, the importance of intuitive website navigation is essential. A well-designed menu not only enhances your user’s experience but also plays a pivotal role in increasing search engine optimization (SEO), that is, the ability for users to find your website when searching the web. 

Here are some best practices to ensure your website's navigation is easy and user-friendly for visitors and search engines alike.

1. Keep it Simple: Simplicity is key when it comes to navigation. Limit the number of menu items to essential categories, avoiding overwhelming users with too many choices upfront.
    
2. Logical Structure: Organize your navigation in a logical hierarchy that reflects the content and structure of your website. Users should be able to predict where they'll find information based on the menu labels.
    
3. Clear Menu Labels: Use descriptive and intuitive labels for menu items, avoiding jargon, acronyms, or ambiguous terms. Visitors should understand immediately what each menu choice entails. Consider conventional titles like About, Programs, Apply etc., so users know what to expect and if space allows, spell out acronyms when possible.
    
4. Consistent Layout and Placement: Maintain consistency in the placement of menus (and other navigation elements) across the pages of your website. Users expect to find the menu in familiar locations, such as the top of the page or along the side.
    
5. Visual Cues: Consider using visual cues like dropdowns and breadcrumbs to aid navigation and provide additional context to users about their location within the site. This is especially helpful when crafting college websites that have multiple departments.
    
6. Mobile-Friendly Design: With the rise of mobile browsing, make sure your navigation is optimized for smaller screens. While Western has built-in tools for responsive design that adapt menu layouts for various devices, long menu titles are challenging to display on smaller screens. Consider responsive displays when drafting your menu labels and keep them short. Finally, be sure to test any updates to your website menu on multiple mobile devices, to ensure they display as expected on a variety of platforms.
    
7. Internal Linking: Not all pages must be present on the main menu. Sometimes a page is only necessary in context with another, more important page that is featured on the menu. In this case, consider using an internal link within your content to reach those other pages. Strategically placed internal links within your content not only help guide users to related pages and encourage exploration throughout your site, but also increase search engine optimization by spreading link equity. If linking to a specific area within a page using an anchor link and be sure to use descriptive link text to give users the best idea of where they are linking off to next.

Additionally, enhancing your website’s navigation also contributes to better search engine optimization (SEO) performance. Search engines prioritize sites that offer a seamless user experience, rewarding them with higher rankings.  

By implementing these best practices, and making slight tweaks to your menu, you can ensure that your website not only offers users a great experience where visitors can find what they need, but also shows up more often in search engine results.