How To Make Your Web Site Navigation Human Readable

How To Make Your Web Site Navigation Human Readable

There is a classic mistake most big, and many small businesses make when they design the navigation for their web sites. What is the mistake? The navigation means absolutely nothing to anyone who visits the web site.

Example:
You are a customer, and you have come to a site to find information on Grid Tie Inverters. You only have three 15 watt solar panels so you need a REALLY small system. You are not trying to power the whole of Africa, or even Vancouver, BC, Canada.

So you come to a web site, known to make grid tie inverters, and here are your choices:

BRANDS:
Green Stick
Blue Door
Red Board

That tells absolutely nothing. But, feeling lucky, you click Red Board and your presented with your next choice.

PRODUCTS:

MODEL: UUU2-XB3
MODEL: ZAP4-RAT7

Kind of hard to choose right?

SUGGESTION: Consider changing your navigation to be human readable.

Here is another example.

BRANDS:
Green Stick – Light up Africa for only $1,000,000,000,000,000,000
Blue Door – Power Systems For Cities or Counties
Red Board – Micro power solutions for home power generating.

From this choice there is at least hope they might have our product.

So we click Red Board and get this:

PRODUCTS:

MODEL: UUU2-XB3 – Grid Tie Inverter.
MODEL: ZAP4-RAT7 – Plans For A Earth Orbiting Solar Powered Laser Rat Zapper

At least we found our product.

WHAT ABOUT MODEL NAMES AND NUMBERS?

Model names should make no sense, because they are intended to confuse your company and the people who buy from you right? Plus, you want everyone to get annoyed by having to always stop and lookup the correct model number. Make them hard to remember, especially to your buyers and any new sales reps you might hire.

Or perhaps not…

Does this name for your new car get you going?

TOYOTA MIDLI-40CR3O40987IS

Did you carefully note the difference between the O and zero above?

All model names and numbers should have at least a few confusing characters like Os and 0s…

Or perhaps not…

At least this would be better for people to remember:

TOYOTA Mid-Life-Crisis.

NOTE: The choice of Grid Tie Inverters was purely random and most likely fictitious like Plans For A Earth Orbiting Solar Powered Laser Rat Zapper…