Navigation bar – Navigation through your online shop

Customers often do not enter your online shop directly on the homepage. After a search query, it is quite common that they land directly on one of your category pages, product pages or your blog. It is therefore correspondingly important that they can navigate through your shop without barriers from here. Your central tool for this is the navigation bar.

But what is the navigation bar, why is it so elementary and what is important for a navigation bar in the online shop? We have taken a closer look at these questions in the following article.

What is a navigation bar?

The navigation bar is the element on your page that helps visitors find their way around. Equipped with links to the corresponding pages, the navigation bar ensures that your potential new customers and regular customers can directly and quickly access the content that is most important to them. It also ensures that users have the chance to get a general overview. The navigation bar in the online shop can usually be found at the top of the homepage header on the desktop and in the upper left corner of the mobile version.

Why is the navigation bar so important in the online shop?

As already mentioned, a navigation bar serves as a central orientation point in your online shop. The menu should make it easier for your visitors to find their way around your site and get exactly where they want to go quickly and effortlessly. At the same time, the navigation bar in the online shop serves as an overview element for the design. Without it, it becomes difficult to provide structure on a page.

In summary, the navigation bar acts as a tool when it comes to ensuring a smooth customer journey from entry to purchase to shopping cart and checkout through your online shop. You increase the chances of increasing your conversion rate with it. In view of the fact that customers usually have several touchpoints with the navigation bar during the course of an order, you should invest sufficient time in the design and development and optimise it according to the target group on the basis of the data.

How is a navigation bar structured?

A navigation bar consists of various elements, which we explain in more detail below.

Main menu

The main menu is the central and superordinate element of the navigation bar in the online shop. All other contents and pages can be accessed from this menu.

Breadcrumb

Breadcrumbs ensure that customers know where they are in your online shop at all times and can quickly find their way back to their starting point or previous pages. Read more about breadcrumb navigation in our blog post.

Filter function

The filter function, which is usually also integrated into the navigation bar, allows visitors to narrow down the results of a page. An example of this is that a customer has landed on the page “T-shirts” and now wants to see all T-shirts in size M and the colour blue.

Search function

In contrast to the filter, the search function ensures that a visitor directly finds the product he is looking for by entering a specific keyword in the search field. To stay with the example above, the search query could be “Blue T-shirt M”. Or even more specifically, “Blue T-shirt M from XY”.

Links

Links make the navigation bar really work. With these, the user reaches the desired page with one click.

Navigation bars are often structured as drop-down menus. First, in the main menu, you will find the upper category analogous to the assortment. These could be “Ladies”, “Men”, “Electronics”, but also directly “T-shirt”, “Smartphones”, etc. Product categories and subcategories follow. The menu item “Ladies” could be followed by “T-shirts” as a product category and “T-shirts with print”, “Tunic” etc. as a subcategory. By clicking on the selected category, the customer is shown the results bar with the entire selection of “Tunic” and can now call up the individual product pages. Via the breadcrumbs of the navigation bar, he keeps track of his way and can quickly jump back to a previous point if necessary.

What types of navigation are there in the online shop?

There are different types of navigation and menu navigation. The classic navigation bar in an online shop is a main menu that stretches once across the entire header area on the start page. The individual categories are displayed as a drop-down menu or accordion menu.

A fold-out side menu or the so-called hamburger menu, which you recognise by the three lines in a rectangle and call up with one click, is less important in an online shop. The hamburger icon, on the other hand, plays an important role as a mobile navigation bar because it saves space and is known and accepted by the majority of mobile users. An important decision factor for success in mobile commerce.

The fixed header or sticky menu appears when the visitor scrolls down on a page. This type of navigation bar is also rather difficult to implement in an online shop. On the other hand, the Mega Menu with dropdown elements is an excellent choice if you have a particularly extensive range of products.

How can you optimise the navigation bar and thus increase the conversion rate?

To ensure a smooth customer journey with the navigation bar, you should consider some important points. We have compiled our best tips below.

Positioning the navigation bar

Visitors should immediately recognise the navigation bar in your online shop as such. It has become ingrained in people’s minds that the main navigation is located horizontally, usually below your logo, in the header.

Stay consistent with this. Once customers have learned where the navigation bar is located in your online shop and how it is structured, you should continue to follow this structure. A change can lead to disorientation and annoyance, so that customers are more inclined to leave the page again and switch to a competitor. The navigation bar should always be in the same place and in the same order. This refers primarily to the main menu. Of course, you can add new sub-categories if necessary or expand your filter.

Make the navigation bar visible

When designing, make sure that the navigation bar stands out visually and at the same time does not appear too dominant. Work with sufficient spacing between categories and underline content with colour or bold. Clear icons and images for the subcategories of the navigation bar, for example, are also suitable.

Clarity of the navigation bar

Always keep in mind that customers want to navigate quickly and easily through your online shop. Therefore, keep the navigation bar as reduced as possible and limit the number of elements to the essentials. If you have an extensive product range that you want to display in the navigation bar, move items such as “About us” or “Imprint” to the footer. In most cases, 5 and 7 menu items have proven successful. In the case of a large online shop, there can of course be more than 7.

In addition, make sure that your navigation bar follows a logical structure. Every customer should be able to move intuitively through the menu. Use the main menu items to divide products sensibly. If you sell care products as well as clothes, each of these has its own item in the main menu of the navigation bar. Under these are the subcategories. But be careful: a large number of subcategories can be counterproductive. Therefore, plan well in advance how your navigation bar should be structured.

Also, take the time to name the menu items of your navigation bar. Keep it as short and concise as possible, but clear. If you sell day and night creams, name the category “Face Creams” instead of “Day and Night Creams”.

Highlighting in the navigation bar

By highlighting the elements with various markings in addition to a sensible structure, you create additional structure and clarity. In the navigation bar, you can work with bold, symbols and icons, among other things. It is only important that these are accepted and recognised by the masses.

Besides optimising the navigation bar, it is also important to keep customers in the online shop in other ways. For this purpose, uptain offers exit-intent pop-ups that help to keep visitors on the website and convert them into customers. The uptain® ALGORITHM recognises when a customer wants to leave the shop by means of the user-friendly mouse-out trigger. This makes it possible to offer the customer the appropriate content at the right time. These personalised offers ensure an unrestricted user experience and increase sales.

More clarity, structure and orientation with the navigation bar

The navigation bar is one of the most important foundations of your online shop and should be well thought out, planned and implemented already during its creation. Only when customers know how to get from A to B and back again, nothing stands in the way of a barrier-free customer journey to checkout – at least as far as navigation is concerned. Furthermore, a clear navigation bar creates trust and a sense of well-being. If the navigation bar is right, visitors have significantly more fun shopping in your online shop. If you want to ensure a positive user experience, it is important to tailor the navigation bar to the needs of your customers right from the start. You can find these out through a detailed target group analysis.