Is Website's Menu Crippling your Conversions? Here’s What to Do about it
The conversion optimization is one of the most discussed topics in the eCommerce scenario. While we have already discussed a lot of factors that may be affecting your conversions, there are a lot of factors that fail to get the required notice. One of our earlier blogs talked about the images that may be killing your conversion which is a lesser discussed issues. In this write-up, we'll be discussing the effect menus on the conversion rates. While this may appear as a design, as per a survey, 37% of respondents said that a poor experience with a navigation was annoying and made them exit from the site.
We will discuss 7 issues with your menu structure that may be crippling your conversions. Stay away from committing these blunders and reap the desired result.
The effect of Left alignment The eye-tracking and the heatmap tools for the various Magento, Prestashop and Opencart store have shown an F-shaped pattern in user engagement. Not just this, the analysis specifies that people spent more than twice as much time viewing the contents on the left side of the web page. 69% of the viewing time of the visitor spends on the left side while 30% is spent on the right half of the screen.
Image Source: www.nngroup.com Thus, placing the menu bar on the left side of the website is one of the ways to boost the usability. In fact, Slideshop.com experienced a 34% boost in the sales after placing the menu on the left side.
Hover menu glitch
The hover menu is one of the most loved menu types of the web designers, but there are some issues related to it that may cost you some conversions. In hover menus, the buttons drop down when the cursor hovers on the menu. In case the cursor of the user moves outside the menu, the buttons disappear. Moving the cursor within the hover tunnel is difficult and time-consuming as well for the customers. This may annoy the users and increase the bounce rates. The click heatmap testing can give you an idea whether the menu is leading to the exits or if it's working fine for you.
Influence of Hamburger menu
The other way of maintaining high conversion rate is by replacing the navigation with the hamburger menu. The best part of having the icon on the site is that it doesn't distract the users from doing their task. The hamburger menu is not just a design trend, it is a handy way of restoring the user experience and providing higher conversion rate to the sign-up pages. It's an user-interface to minimize the navigation. The text links may draw a lot of attention, but at the same time they distract the visitors. However, in the case of hamburger menu, the users will only use them when they want to. It is a preferred icon for the mobile sites to save space, but is not a preferred option for websites and eCommerce stores. Moreover, it should include the word ‘menu’ so that visitors understand the purpose.
Effect of trigger words
Having discussed the pros of Hamburger menu, there is one problem with it that requires reconsideration. When the menu is hidden the trigger words such as ‘Search’, ‘New Arrivals’, ‘Offers’ that intrigues the visitor are not visible as well. For instance, if a woman is shopping in the clothing section, she would look for the word ‘Women’s’ in the menu buttons. Thus, for the desktop websites, the expandable menus are essential. The visitors come to the site with some of the phrases and keywords in their mind. These keywords and trigger words are even an essential aspect of good navigation. The heatmap analysis can give you an insight of the words and phrases that are grabbing the attention of the visitors and those that are going unnoticed. The menu items, as well as the call to action triggers, can be changed accordingly.
Menu size and color
The clarity of the menu bar is another factor that can that can cripple the conversations of your site. The items on the web pages should be bold and clear. The design and the content are two of the aspect of clarity. Right from the text of the button and menu bar to the color combination everything should be focused to ease the experience of the user. The menus should be wide enough to make reading and clicking easier. Along with the size consider the color combination. The text of the menu should contrast the background. This will make it visible from a distance.
The pros and cons of Mega menu bar
The mega menu has taken the eCommerce industry by storm lately. The eCommerce giant Amazon introduced it in the year 2006 and have been a trailblazer since then. However, some of the companies saw a 15%-20% drop in revenues immediately upon deploying their new mega-menu-based navigation. Listed below are some of the issues that you need to keep in mind before implementing the menu. 尋 The handful of navigation elements is confusing for the users at times as they don't know which one will go straight to another page. Some menu items produce dozens of menus that are even more confusing for the users. 尋 When the menu is hidden, all of the phrases and keywords that the user is looking for in the site is hidden as well. Users can’t predict the future and the absence of the words that trigger their buying intention may hamper the lead generation.
尋 Another issue for mega menu implementations is that they are big and eat up a lot of space in the home page. 尋 Along with this, the menu type has the same issues (mentioned in the above point) all the hover menus face.
Along with all these cons, the mega menu offers some undeniable usability, especially to the eCommerce stores. They are listed below.
尋 All options available in the store is visible in one go. The usual drop down menu hides almost all options from the user hovers the category. 尋 Mega menus allow visual grouping of options into logical groups and make navigation easier.
尋 Additionally, the items and the text in the mega menu is clear and visually appealing to the users.
Wrapping it up While the menu may appear to be just a factor to make the site visually appealing, it happens to affect the sale to a very large extent. Some of the issues and their solutions are discussed in the above points, but the final implementation should be done after making your own analysis. Indulge into A/B testing and heatmap testing and find out the pitfalls in your website designing.