Optimise Menus: 6 Ux Tweaks For Clear Store Navigation

Understanding User Behavior in Navigation

You know that feeling of walking into the wrong train carriage. Everyone inside is looking at you and you’re startled enough to look for the nearest available seat - which happens to be empty anyway, but you’d rather not have any more passengers gazing at you, so you keep on walking. You didn’t want to stay there, you wanted to walk away and never be seen by those people again, but the fact that every seat is empty made it slightly better. And that’s sort of how your customers feel when they walk into an improperly labelled or sorted store navigation menu.

Give people a reason to stay. Clean up the benches and make them want to come back tomorrow. Sort of. People are staying at your store because they think it will have something useful for them.

Once they find out where everything is comparatively in an ordered fashion, they will be delighted by the various ways you are sorting products they might already be interested in. User behaviour is basically a fancy term for human behaviour when surrounded by options. We’re monkeys that like to choose one banana over another - then we want to go back and select the better banana if we don’t like our first pick.

If there’s something else about the product we want even more - we might want the orange instead of that banana - even better if there’s a third-party review validating our choices too. These are called micro conversions and can take place within navigation menus too, if structured right. Micro conversions add value to the purchasing journey and can seldom be used to add gravitas to specific product pages as well. But this means nothing if they can’t find them easily enough within your navigation system.

So study your users really well - analyse heat maps and click tracks to understand what people are most drawn towards in your store before making sweeping changes all over again.

Prioritizing Key Items: The Power of Hierarchy

Reminds Me Of there’s nothing worse than walking into a physical store that looks like the warehouse from raiders of the lost ark. It’s overwhelming and gives you a sense of unease, because you are seldom in such a state of choice overload. These days even online spaces can overwhelm us with their myriad options in the menu, leaving users with choice overload. As someone who has spent their fair share of time scrolling through websites looking for a new addition to their closet, cluttered websites are potentially a pet peeve.

I’ve noticed that when it comes to being clear about hierarchy, categorising based on the product is the way to go, but so is making sub menus. Some stores also let you expand category pages, so that you can see all the items in just one page. This is especially handy for things like t-shirts and trousers which are basics but come in many variations. A menu structured well will show people exactly where they are on your website and allow them to browse easily, which in turn will make their experience more enjoyable, resulting in repeat business.

More or less. When creating hierarchy, we recommend thinking from the perspective of someone visiting your website. What would they want to see. Where would they want to see it.

A good menu makes it easy to find what you’re looking for by grouping similar products together under one title, with submenus opening up when you hover over them. If it helps you can also colour code your categories, or give them little icons that make them stand out. This doesn’t just make it easier for users to navigate your store but also builds brand identity and presence in a very subtle yet effective way.

Mobile Optimization: Adapting Menus for Small Screens

You know when you’re trying to order a quick lunch on your phone, but you can’t seem to find the burger menu. That gets me every time. I’ve actually exited apps because I couldn’t be bothered to scroll through a random menu hidden somewhere.

Mobile menus are tricky that way, and it’s not all on the UI designers. The screen is tiny, and you don’t have enough space to play with; sometimes, we end up hiding everything in the hamburger. But customers spend less than half the time scrolling through apps for a reason – we want accessible and relevant information without having to struggle. I think mobile optimisation is about saving energy and making things easier for everyone.

Prioritising what's important by placing it at the top of your menu is one way to do that - and so is using visuals, more icons, and a search bar at the very top. Customers won’t interact with something they can’t see, but they won’t explore an app if it means tapping on every single menu. A well-designed navigation should let them control their journey by giving them options. More or less.

And finally, don’t be afraid to run some tests across devices for usability. Mobile optimisation isn’t a one-time thing, especially as we see new devices coming out every few months. Consistency is key - if customers switch from their laptop to phone, they shouldn’t have too much difficulty doing what they want.