Sometimes when a company here in Cardiff, South Wales are having their website designed, they will concentrate on what the homepage looks like, and what the main pages look like.

That’s to say sometimes they will want a slider, that’s to say something on the homepage that will instantly communicate what the business can offer.

Yet sometimes it’s the finer details that the business must also pay close attention to- that’s because if the website has a main menu that’s not easy to use, well this could mean that the website incurs a very high bounce rate, which means that the businesses SEO could be negatively affected.

This is why you should work closely with your web design company to make sure that your company website looks great, but that the main menu works well.

Here’s what we deem as essential when building a main menu for a website:

·        Clearly visible (we do not like menus that only appear when you hoover the mouse)

·        Easy to use

·        Make it simple, group products

·        Carry out split testing or A / B testing and try and reduce the businesses bounce rate by improving the menu

The main menu

What is the main menu we hear you ask?

Well, sometimes a website will have many different ways that a shopper can navigate around the website- for example there may well be links on the homepage (Main Menu)- there may well be links in the footer, plus there might also be a search bar so people can type what they are looking for.

And if you sell say over 1000 different products, well, your going to need a search bar, as often a shopper will know the product that they want, they are just shopping on price, and who can offer the customer the best deal.

Yet, one of the most important parts of your website will be the main menu, now normally this is a bar that is located across the top of the website, with a drop-down menu.

Now, a lot of businesses try to be different, that’s by having a menu that disappears, that’s until the shopper hoovers their mouse over the menu, or by having a menu that expands once you click a box, but if your selling products, or you are a company that offers services, there’s one things that is for sure, test, that’s to say test whichever menu option you go for, make sure it works.

Your web developer may build a menu that’s not the best for your business, that’s to say a menu that’s over simplified. This simply means that the designer may well be designing a minimalistic website and in-keeping with the overall design of the website, they may make a menu that is simple.

Yet if the menu fails in its main purpose which is to get shoppers to the page of the website that they want quickly- well, your business may obtain a very high bounce rate.

So we would recommend, which ever Cardiff web design company that you choose, that you carry out split testing or A/B testing to make sure that the main menu works correctly, and that the businesses bounce rate is kept as low as possible.

That’s to say if you were to later hire your digital marketing agency, to later improve your businesses organic seo, then they may start to alter the design to see if this improves your businesses seo.  

Sometimes a business will opt for a menu that compliments the design, for example it might be a menu that you need to click on to make it expand into full screen mode- yet if the menu doesn’t work on say a smartphone, then you might get a very high bounce rate, so make sure that you choose a menu that works for your business, yet works on desktops, mobile and tablet as well.

So, make sure that your web design agency here in Cardiff does testing.

Bounce rates

Let’s say your web designer designs a CMS website, and the style is minimalist, so you don’t want a large main menu, you’ve instead opted for a menu that’s discreet, the shopper has to click a box, and then the menu appears.

Yet, the menu may not be built correctly that’s because it may not work on smartphones, and because of this your website could have a very high bounce rate.

This is why it so important that your web developer does testing, plus you may wish to carryout A/B testing, that’s to try and improve your businesses bounce rate.

Easy to use

Here’s the thing, well known company’s will spend a great deal of time building their main menus.

That’s to say the main menu should be easy to use, you may sell say over 5000 products, yet the web design company should aim to make the main menu easy to use, that’s to say as soon as a visitor to the website lands on the homepage, you should be aiming to get the customer to the right page as quick as you can.

A menu that doesn’t do this, and makes it hard for the customer to find the right product will just mean that the website incurs a high bounce rate.

So often a lot of HTML, CSS and PHP coding will need to take place on an ongoing basis to make sure that your business can design a menu that helps to reduce your businesses bounce rate, while helping shoppers to find the products that they want more easily.

For example, let’s say that you retail men’s clothes, and you contact a Cardiff web designer to help build a website.

Yet, when the WordPress website is first built, it groups all shoes together, and your business monitors sales, and also the websites performance in Google Analytics, now the business later hires the web design business to improve the design, that’s by building a new main menu, and splitting shoes by type, so running trainers, formal shoes and casual shoes.

The business spots that the organic seo improves, so does the businesses sales, so this is why you should always aim to improve your businesses design and organic seo.

Okay, granted, we are not saying that by just changing the design of the main menu, that this will instantly improve your company’s seo, however, often if a business improves its SEO, then often the design will need to be improved as well.

For example, an seo consultant may want “formal shoes” to have its own page, so the business can add a meta title, meta description and alt tags for that page. This then means the design of the website needs to be improved, and so by making a design improvement, sometimes the SEO will improve as well.

This is why major brands and company’s often work with an seo agency and a web design agency, and these company’s often work together to improve the website.

Often the designers will use A/B testing, or split testing to improve the design, however before they make the change for all shoppers, they may use A/B testing to see if the design change has made an improvement in terms of sales.

So before the HTML and CSS changes to the design of the website are available for all shoppers, they may use Google Analytics to see if the design changes result in the business making more sales.

Design the main menu

You should spend a lot of time with your web designers designing the menu, sometimes a company will design the menu quickly.

Yet, if the main menu does not include enough pages, or is not easy to use, then over the long run this could increase your businesses bounce rate.

Often many web designers will advertise a fixed price to design a website, which may well be great for some businesses. However, sometimes the price is kept low to only design the website to say four pages, or if you pay more you may get a 10 page website.

However, what a business should do, is instead of opting for a low cost website, is to think about how many pages you really need. That’s to say we would recommend designing a sitemap, thinking about how many pages you need, then opt for a design that is best for your business, not to save money by opting for a fixed price package which may offer less pages than what you need.

Why do we say that?

Well, lets say you run a business that sells double glazing, and you opt for a web design business because they offer a really low price for a 5-page website. Yet, if you cannot fit all of your product range, such as double glazing, UPVC doors, conservatories, about us page, contact us, homepage and also double glazing repair, so you decide to consolidate pages, well this might adversely affect the businesses seo.

As any good web design agency will tell you, for each main service that your company offers, such as for example, UPVC doors, the business should have a separate page for that product.

This is so the web designer can add a meta title, meta description, alt tag and also product description to each page.

A/B and split testing

You may wish to hire a web developer that can offer what is called “split testing” or “A/B testing”- this is so the web developer can make improvements to the main menu, or the mobile menu so that your business can reduce its bounce rate.

Mobile version / Responsive

Often a business will sign-off their web design on the basis that they are happy with the desktop version of the website, however, you should also consider if you are happy with the mobile version of the website.

As sometimes there can be problems with some websites mobile menu’s, for example a drop-down menu that expands too far down the screen, a menu that doesn’t load at all, or a menu that has small font.

So, your web developer should test the menu, that’s to make sure it works correctly, and the font is large enough to read.

Google Analytics

Your business, or your marketing agency may wish to install Google Analytics, this is so you can monitor how many visitors your site gets, plus when you make website improvements, such as changing the design of the main menu, whether this improves your websites bounce rate, by lowering it.

How we can help:

If you run a company here in Cardiff that requires a Joomla, or a WordPress website, then why not call us?

We are an established web design company. We have web developers that can build a website for your business.

Our web design company can offer WordPress websites, Joomla websites, plus we can also help your business to improve its organic SEO.

We make the whole web design process easy for your business, we can even write the content marketing for your company. We can build a simple website, or we can work with large businesses here in Cardiff as well.

We are a local web design company, so why not give us a ring if you need any of the following services:

·        Web design

·        Organic SEO

·        Logo design

·        CMS websites

·        WordPress websites

·        Joomla websites

·        E-commerce websites