In my speeches at conferences and in-house seminars, I talk about 12 common blunders on marketing websites.
Each and every one of them can impact the effectiveness of your website. One of these blunders is in the use of the navigation bar and navigational choices.
The cause of distractions that will greatly depress your results
Most websites have multiple navigation choices—in other words, they have too many options that distract from the sales message or send the prospect to other pages on the site.
Ensuring your #1 goal of closing the sale
Often when I create a direct marketing site and landing page, it will have no navigation bar at all.
It simply starts with the headline and moves prospects down the page to the order form at the bottom with a continuous flow of direct response copy.
In the cases where I do use a navigation bar, I keep it simple and, if possible, the navigation links prospects to something that is further down the page, again so that they never leave the sales process.
Ask yourself before including a navigation choice: Is the navigation choice necessary? Does it interrupt the flow of the sales process instead of helping secure the lead or sale? If the answer is yes, leave it out.
For more information on how to improve the effectiveness of your marketing websites, click here to read my article 11 Tested and Proven Web Marketing Offer Strategies.