How To Streamline Your Website Structure
In this digital age, having a business website is no longer a nice-to-have. In fact, it’s one of the factors that most consumers consider before they transact with a brand. However, it’s not enough that you have a website—you need to pay attention to several elements that can make it a great one. Aside from web design, functionality, SEO-friendliness, and user experience, there’s one critical component you should streamline: your website structure.
In a nutshell, the structure refers to the website’s organization, generally referring to how each page is connected to one another. To be clear, though, all websites do have a structure. The question is, what kind? A poor or confusing layout can guarantee an increase in users leaving your site, aka your “bounce rate”.
With that said, it’s highly advised to improve and streamline your structure right away. Not only can it create easier navigation for your users, but it may also make you look good in the eyes of search engines. Site structure impacts your SEO standing and directly affects the impression and experience of users visiting your website.
Creating A Clear Page Hierarchy
A well-structured website means having a hierarchical arrangement or composition in its pages. The goal is to make a user’s visit easier and more convenient. Think of how visitors usually come to your page and start browsing typically at the home page. From the home page, they can go deeper and browse through a series of dropdowns or menus that can take them to a particular section they’re searching for.
In this regard, considering a silo structure might be of an advantage to your website. Silos are a great visual technique to help group pages and improve SEO. Just as silos on a farm group grain are separated to maintain their value and integrity, siloing your website can help improve your overall site structure.
Creating a silo structure allows you to group links and content structures in a way that search engines love. All information and data that your site covers are cleanly separated into specific categories, making it efficient for both visitors and search engines to find what they’re looking for. Just make sure that each category should have at least five pages under it, and each page in every category should be thoroughly linked to other pages in the category.
Rethinking Your URL Structure
When you’ve successfully structured the hierarchy of your page, what follows next is the URL structure. This shouldn’t be that tricky anymore if the hierarchy has been clearly developed and presented on your website.
Take, for example, a skincare shop with multiple locations, and your client is looking for the address of the store located downtown. The URL for that particular store should read something like this: www.examplestore/locations/downtown. Keeping the URL simple and clean defines a streamlined structure, and obviously, there should be no symbols.
Other tips you might want to keep in mind when structuring URLs for your page are:
- Focus on using keywords instead of special characters or symbols.
- Make sure the URL gives a glimpse of how your website is structured, which offers an efficient context to anyone who’ll be utilizing the links to find what they need.
- Create concise URLs with easily recognizable words.
Rethinking your URL structure is necessary to ensure an organized page. To add, you also need to check if the links are properly working. Broken links are a big letdown and could lead to visitors leaving your site without so much as a second thought. You can take advantage of online tools that notify sites whenever there’s a website error or broken link.
Is Mobile Friendliness Necessary?
The short answer to this question is—yes. As you already know, consumers have dramatically shifted to mobile browsing for anything they need to do online. Whether it’s for updating their social media accounts, looking for information via the internet, or finding a particular product, customers heavily rely on their handheld devices for solutions.
With this in mind, it’s high time to consider optimizing your website for mobile use. You can pattern the mobile structure using the conventional one you already have, so your customers won’t get confused or lost while navigating the mobile version. The sense of familiarity will make it easier for them to place orders, check your latest products, or read your blog posts.
The key is to guarantee responsiveness regardless of how visitors access your site. Keep in mind that consumers’ waiting time and attention span are getting shorter and shorter by the day. It’s relatively easy for them just to leave your page the moment they realize it’s taking too long before they can find what they need.
The Bottom Line
Streamlining your website structure is an excellent step to take if you want to retain customers, improve SEO standing, and boost traffic volume. With the tips mentioned above, you’ll indeed reduce your bounce rate while enticing your users to spend more time and take a good look at your content. This can potentially result in more conversions down the line and increasing revenue for your business.