5 Best Practices for making navigation mobile-friendly

In today’s world, there are more mobile users than desktop visitors. Google has also moved on to mobile-first indexing method. This means that the ranking of the website will depend on the mobile content as well as the relevance and UX. All of these three factors are dependent on mobile navigation. Hence, the mobile navigation contributes a lot to the SEO ranking of the website. For improving the SEO ranking of your website, you can also get the services of the best SEO company.

A good navigation allows the visitors to get what they require in an easy manner. On the website, usually a lot of things are present in the form of multi-tiered lists but this cannot happen on mobile devices. If the same approach will be used for the mobile devices then the site will look cluttered on mobile that will result in less number of conversions.

1. Keep Mobile Navigation Simple and short

Most of the mobile screens are not very large. Hence, the navigation must be designed while keeping the size of the screen in mind. As the screen is small, so the clutter should be avoided. Only add those links that can be helpful to the user and avoid unnecessary things. Cut off the elements that are unimportant in mobile navigation.

It is the best practice to limit your mobile navigation to four or eight items. There is no need of linking all the pages to the site. You can do this for your desktop navigation but in mobile navigation, these practices are not fruitful.

In some cases, you may also need multi-level navigation in order to enhance user experience. This is usually required for the Ecommerce sites. We recommend you to keep it simple and add only one sub-level of dropdown functionality. If you want to include more items then you can use a vertically oriented navigation that is activated from a menu icon.

If the needs of mobile users are not very vast then static navigation that runs across the top of your design can be another good option.  Horizontally placed navigation bars are not mobile friendly. So, you should try to use only the vertical bars.

2. List the Important Pages First

People do not have much time to spend on the sites. If they will not find what they are looking for then they will not search much and will switch to another site. Hence, you must keep the important things first so that your users do not lose their patience.

You must keep these questions in mind while designing mobile navigation:

• What are the pages that are most important?
• What actions the site visitors usually take while scrolling?
• What pages of the site usually satisfy the requirements of users?

The answers to these questions will help you to keep the most important pages on top. Moreover, it will also help you to know that which links should be placed on each page.

Keep in mind that your navigation menu should look consistent throughout the site. The consistent navigation menu will help your users to get around the site easily.

3. Search is an important part of thenavigation

The mobile users consider search as a part of navigation so you should also consider it as an important element.

Let’s take the example of Amazon.com. Amazon has not provided a dropdowncategory to mobile users; though if you want then you can get it under the “Departments” icon. The most prominent icon there is a “Search” box.

Amazon has not placed any long menus for the users where they can find what they want even it has a huge catalog. It has used a simple way where the customers can simply type the name of the product and can search for it.

For a better mobile navigation experience, you must consider the search box as it is the direct route to the needs of the users.

4. The mobile navigation must be Intuitive

You should give a pleasant navigating experience to your customers so that they return in future. This can be done by making the navigation easier for the users.

You should make your navigation intuitive by writing the menu language in a way that the user can understand easily. The menu language must be very clear so that the user does not face any difficulty.

For example, if you are using symbols to convey information to the visitors then make use of clear andconventional symbols; such as for dropdown menu items, you can use an intuitive symbol like a plus sign (+) or an arrow (>). This will let your users know that by clicking the symbol they can get more options. Moreover, for indicating the search feature, you can use a magnifying glass. You can search for intuitive symbols before using them on your site.

5. Use appropriate Fonts and Contrast

Make sure that the text is visible so that mobile users do not need to zoom in order to read the text. Same goes for the text within your navigation. An inappropriate and tiny font size will result in bad user experience as the visitors will need to zoom the text. This will affect the SEO ranking of your site as well.

Hence, text must be large enough so that the users can read it easily without zooming in the pages. For accomplishing this, the font must be chosen carefully. Try to choose the font that adds the space to the text naturally so that it is easier to distinguish between letters.

While choosing the font size and style, you must also consider the style of your brand and your targeted audience. For example, the young audience can read the small size font easily but it can be troublesome for the old age people. Moreover, you should also use appropriate bullet styles, capitalization, margins, captioning, etc for making your pages attractive and easy to read.

Hence, these are some tips that can help you in making the mobile navigation more user-friendly and will also result in improved SEO ranking. We recommend you to hire SEO services for improving the SEO ranking of your site in SERP’s.If you have some other tip, feel free to share with us in the box below: