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Basic, clear website navigation is essential to launching an effective online presence. It helps visitors easily explore your website and find the information they need. When you’re selling products or services from an ecommerce site, good navigation becomes that much more important to the user experience. It can be the difference between a customer abandoning their cart or completing a sale, and it’s a key factor in whether people think your brand is trustworthy.
Strong ecommerce navigation makes it easy for new and returning customers to find products and make a purchase from your online store. Learn how to optimize your navigation design, including your navigation menu items, checkout, site search, and your store’s main categories.
What is ecommerce navigation?
Ecommerce navigation is a type of website navigation that encourages visitors to make a purchase from your store. Good ecommerce navigation will help people find the right products, add them to their cart, and check out without running into any usability issues or getting lost in the site navigation.
If you already have an online store with Squarespace, you can measure the success of your navigation experience with tools like Commerce analytics, which help you see the performance of specific products and landing pages. For example, if you find that many people bounce from your store before purchasing—meaning they leave your website from a specific landing page to go explore another corner of the Internet—it’s likely that the root cause is your website’s navigation. The landing page might not have the information users expected, or it might be missing a clear call to action (CTA) to direct users to the next step in their journey. Analytics can help you understand what’s working—and what isn’t—about your main navigation options, and help you refine your navigation structure over time.
Many website builders offer website templates that have built-in navigation elements to set your ecommerce store up for success. Squarespace’s online store templates are built with ecommerce navigation best practices in mind to encourage visitors to become customers.
Important navigation elements for your online store
Whether you’re starting an online store or looking to improve your current ecommerce website navigation, here are four areas to focus on to get started.
1. Organized menu
A clear navigation bar and dropdown menu are the foundation of good navigation. Usually found in the header of the homepage and every landing page on your site, an effective navigation bar and menu will organize your products by product categories and subcategories. For example, an online clothing store with a “Shirts” category in its dropdown might include subcategories like “Short Sleeve” and “Long Sleeve” so customers can find exactly what they need on that category page. Categories and subcategories also help search engines understand the products you sell, and make them more discoverable for online shoppers.
2. Effective checkout experience
Checkout might be the last step in a user’s journey in your online store, but it’s one of the most important. A poorly designed checkout experience can mean that someone ditches their purchase at the last minute—even if the rest of their experience with your website has been smooth and simple. From customizing your store’s checkout to providing clear shipping options and autocomplete functionality for address or payment information, a straightforward checkout experience gives shoppers confidence in your brand.
3. Search bar
A functional search bar will help users easily find the product they’re looking for, or search general categories if they’re not quite sure what they want to purchase yet. If you’ve optimized your website for search engines, a site search function can be especially useful for people who come to your website through organic search. They’re likely looking for a specific product or service, and if a search engine didn’t already direct them to it, your website’s navigation should help them quickly find what they need once they’ve arrived at your store.
4. Store pages and product pages
Since ecommerce customers don’t have the option to interact with your products in person, providing context and information about each item you sell is key. A store page allows shoppers to see and scroll through your whole product catalog at once.
When they click on an item on your store page, customers should be sent to a product details page (PDP). A PDP includes multiple images of a product, and shares everything from sizing and price, to color options, materials, customer product reviews, and more. With Squarespace Commerce, you can customize the layout of your PDP to best match your online store’s brand and mission.
With the right product photography and a steady stream of product reviews on your PDPs and a store page layout that displays your offerings, customers can quickly familiarize themselves with your brand and find something to purchase.
Looking for more ways to increase sales? Learn how to write effective product descriptions that optimize your website for conversion.
This post was updated on January 23, 2023.