Your Website Navigation Could Be Losing Orders
by Jason Ryan Isaksen

Website navigation simply refers to how the users at your website get from one page to another. It's extremely important to make sure it's easy for people on your website to get from one place to another. And never, never, never assume your readers know where you want them to go on your website. You must take control and be very specific and direct when it comes to the navigation of your website. Now's not the time to be shy! Grab the bull by the horns! Tell your customers very clearly where you'd like them to click first. And then where you'd like them to click next.

Don't go and create some weird set of menu buttons on your website and put it in some odd place on your site. When it comes to the main menu of your website, I strongly believe you should put it where every other website usually locates it. It's almost considered standard to have all your main menu buttons on the upper left hand side of your website. And that's exactly where your menu should be.

 Marketing surveys tell us that's the first place new visitors to a website look when they enter a new website for the first time. So why confuse them by putting your menu some where else? As humans we like certain things to be obvious and easy to find. Like the buttons to an elevator are almost always centered between the top and the bottom of the elevator door. Those two elevator door buttons are no different from the menu buttons on a website.

We all expect for them to be in a certain place. Can you imagine if a hotel put the buttons to their elevator all the way at the bottom near the floor. How many people do you think would automatically bend down to look down there? Or can you imagine if auto makers put the break pedal on the far right side where the gas pedal normally is in a new car you bought?

Even if you had a problem finding something in the real off-line world, you could always ask a nearby worker how to find something. But on the internet, there's nobody around to ask! The internet doesn't have workers standing around to help you out, so you must make your navigation extra, extra clean, clear, and simple.

Another secret of mine is to put navigation links or buttons at the bottom of each page. This makes your website flow more easily and it also has another major benefit. When your reader gets to the bottom of one of your web pages, he/she will probably be thinking."Ok, where do I go now"

So I like to go ahead and already have a link or button right at the end of the page that tells the reader the best place to go next. It just makes logical sense.Your reader gets to the end of your article or sales letter, and there it is, a button right where his/her eyes were heading. A clear and simple button or link that is in the perfect order because it's the next thing their eyes will see when they finish reading. Most websites don't do this because the person who put the site together wasn't educated about how effective this method is at keeping your readers at your website. This is a simple and effective way to keep readers from quickly exiting your website.

Because if your reader gets to the end of your article or sales letter and isn't sure what to click on next, there's a good chance that reader will just leave your website. And navigation at the bottom of each of your web pages makes that less likely to happen and this obviously gives you a better conversion rate. And this puts more cash in your pocket!

Also it's very important that you have a "Home" button on every page of your website. I know that may sound obvious, but you wouldn't believe how many marketers are failing to do this. And why is it so important? It's critical to have a "Home" button on your website because many internet surfers/shoppers will enter your website through pages other than your main home page.

 It's very typical for your visitors to come from one of the many other links to your website that the search engines list. For example, lets say the search engines for some strange reason have listed your "About Us" page instead of your main home page. Well obviously your readers are going to want to see your main page and they'll be looking all over that "About Us" page for a way to get to your main home page. They'll be looking for a "Home" page button to take them there.

Another important feature to add to your website is a link that says "Bookmark" this web page. This is one of the quickest items you can add to your site to encourage people to come back again. It takes seconds to add this link to your site and it will pay off for years. Also make the title of the pages you're asking readers to bookmark very descriptive and exciting. I say this because your bookmark is going to be appearing in the middle of a long list of other book-marked web pages. You want yours to stand out from the others. A good way to test this is to click on your own "Bookmark this page" link to see exactly how your site listing will appear in your list of favorites.