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In my last article I talked about how content is the most important aspect of a website.  While this is true, it is only part of the equation.

Today I’m going to look at what else on your site is important – namely site navigation.

Site navigation is not only important to search engine crawlers, it is EXTREMELY important to those who are most important to the success of your site – namely your customers.

Have you ever tried to drive somewhere you’ve never been to and do it without a map or any driving directions at all?  How frustrated did you get?  Did you eventually give up and quit looking for the place?  Or were you like me and bow to your wife’s insistence on getting driving directions?

In any event, trying to find something when you are in unfamiliar territory can be frustrating at best.  There is a high likelihood of failure because you don’t know what your are looking for, or how to get there.

This is what the web is to many people.  It’s a big scary place where one wrong click can send them to websites where the most bizarre stuff occurs.

I remember attending a seminar at a Search Engine Strategies conference and listening to one of the engineers of a search engine.

One of his parents was having problems navigating the web.  A website they wanted to visit wouldn’t load, or something to that effect.  When he told them to just go type the address into the address bar, they wouldn’t do it.  They were afraid that if they typed it in wrong, they’d be forever lost in the web, with no way to return.

In fact, if you were to look at some of the top referring keywords for many sites you’d see that people use search engines to search for www.domain.com even though they could just type that into the address bar.  I’d be willing to bet that one of the top referrers to Google is MSN and the search term is “www.google.com.” This is because many people still have their home pages set to MSN but prefer Google to search with.  Therefore they search for Google on MSN, then click through to Google to start their searching.

So if many users are having this much difficulty navigating the web, why would you want to make it even more frustrating for them by making your website equally difficult to navigate?

Effective site navigation can mean the difference between sales and disgruntled former customers.

As I mentioned earlier, while the navigation is necessary for your site to be fully indexed it is even more important that users can easily navigate the site.  This is because not every visitor will start at the home page.  In fact, likely over ˝ of your site referrals will start at an internal site page. Therefore you want to be sure that no matter where the site visitor enters your site, they can easily get through to other parts of the site.

The hard part has been done, after all, your site ranked highly for their search term.  They are motivated to do business with you.  All you have to do is lead them down the path to conversion.

But this is where many sites fail.  Sometimes the visitor lands on a page that has non-intuitive navigation or in worst case scenarios, they’ve landed on a page with no navigation. (I’ve seen this happen, I’ve even landed on sites like this – I can’t tell you how many sites have lost my business because I couldn’t easily find what I wanted).

So, how do you test your navigation?  First, check to see if your site is indexed in the search engines.  If you do a “site:domain.com” search in Google, for example, you will see how many pages the search engine crawler has found.  If the number appears about right, then you know the crawler has found all the pages.  That’s a good first step.  If the number is low, then you know you’ve got problems.  After all, if a crawler can’t find the page then it’s doubtful that the visitor ever will.

So, lets assume that all your pages are indexed.  What next?

Chances are pretty good that you are really familiar with your site.  In fact you are probably too familiar.  Therefore you need a set (or a few sets) of inexperienced eyes to try and browse your site.

Get some friends and family to surf your site.  And get them to make notes of any areas they find confusing.  The more honest and critical they can be, the better.

You can even set up some scenarios – get them to complete a sale, or search for a product, or just get more information.  In other words, get them to act as you think your customers would act.

Note any complaints or input they have.  Remember not to take anything too personally, and don’t try to justify the site.  Just listen to what they have to say.  The more brutally honest they can be with you the better off your site will be in the end.

These can be great first steps into improving your site and streamlining the conversion process.

Also, add a new link to all your pages.  Something that can give your site’s visitors a way to let you know what they like or dislike about your site.  This type of input from real customers can be invaluable to helping turn your site into a sales machine.

Once you make the changes your friends and family have suggested, as well as some of the changes recommended by customers, your site should begin to generate more sales for you.

After all, your website is there to help your customers fulfill a need. Why not make it easier for them by helping guide them to the product or service they want?