How to Update Your Navigation Menu to Increase Pageviews

When designing (or re-designing) your blog, it’s easy to get carried away with the fun fonts and colors. Problem is, one very important area of your site often gets thrown together without much thought: the navigation menu.

The 10-Minute Touch Up is a quick, weekly challenge to get you DOING, not just reading about doing. Consider it a way to touch up your blogging just 10 minutes at a time!

Challenge:  Use Google Analytics to see what’s being clicked… then tweak your menu to perform even better.

Why: Your navigation menu is often the first place new visitors look when they’re feeling out your blog. By putting your most important stuff in the menu, you’ll get visitors touring your site. More clicks = more pageviews.

How to Do It

Luckily, all this analyzing stuff is easy to do.

1. Within Google Analytics, go to Behavior >In-Page Analytics.

Depending on your browser, you may get an error message saying it couldn’t load within GA. If it’s not working, I recommend using Chrome because it’ll prompt you to download the Page Analytics extension, which I find easier to view anyway.

Install it, then visit your home page and select the Analytics button within your browser (snazzy screenshot below). Select where you’d like the panel to show up (I chose Top) and it’ll start doing its magic. Trust me, this whole set-up takes longer to describe than to actually do.

2. Study which tabs are getting the most and least clicks.

When your In-Page Analytics loads up, you’ll get this little beauty. For the people who visited my home page, I can see what percentage of people clicked each “tab” of my navigation menus.

What info am I gleaning from this?

Some non-meaty things…

• People expect to click a header to return to the home page (luckily mine does that)
• Visitors access My Courses fairly often
• The Home tab gets used often
• People visit my About page (If you don’t have an About page on your menu, DO IT NOW. It’s one of the most popular pages that brands and new visitors go to.)

And some really meaty things…

• My Blogging Resources tab gets a high percentage of clicks
• People are interested in the new Pinterest e-course
• People are curious what I sell in the Shop
• People might need a blog designer (or at least want to browse through my directory)
• People aren’t as interested in Advertising, but they are in fact clicking

Some things to ask as you’re looking at your own navigation menu:

• Am I including at least one of my top categories in the menu bar? (I was vetting blogs last week for a work project and found I would look to see if they considered Beauty a big enough topic to be in their nav menu. Moral of story? Brands are looking at this.)
• Am I featuring my products in my menu?
• Do I have any popular pages I should be highlighting?
• Do I have an About and Contact page? (always, always, always have both of these)
• Which pages aren’t getting clicks that are important?
• Which pages are getting clicks but aren’t that important?

3. Draw conclusions and make changes accordingly (here’s where you’ll generate more pageviews).

Based on studying my In-Page Analytics, you see I made some changes to my main navigation menu! Here’s what I did and why:

• Kept Home and Blogging Resources the same: These are getting clicked right where they are, so no need to mess with a good thing.
• Removed Pinterest Course tab: This added room for some other new things on the menu.
• Changed “Shop” to “E-Courses”, with a drop-down to all three courses: I figured if the Pinterest class was getting clicks, perhaps I could draw awareness to ALL my courses by just calling this tab “e-courses.” We’ll see how it plays out, but I might end up adding one course name to the menu and rotating them out.
• Added links to two top categories: Again, after realizing I was searching bloggers’ content using the nav menu, I realized I didn’t call out top categories in my nav menu. I chose Social Media Tips and Blog Design, but will adjust if needed.
• Removed “Advertising”: It was getting clicks, but my page was worthless and I don’t work with brands or sell advertising on Blog Clarity at the moment. Hoping to drive those clicks elsewhere by removing this. I’ll add it to the top menu when I have time to work with brands.
• Positioned “Find a Designer” at the end: I kept it because it’s one of my top-trafficked pages. However, I put it at the end because the page directs people AWAY from my site to blog designers’ sites and my priority is keeping them here.

With the right changes to your menu, you’ll see more pageviews because you’re highlighting your best content. It’s too early to tell what my changes will bring, but I’ll let you know what happens!

Your Turn

What’s getting clicked in your navigation menu? What changes did you make?