Tips and Tricks to Improve WordPress Website Navigation

Posted by Flytonic on April 10, 2014 in WordPress

If you want to create a top-notch website, you must focus on not just perfecting the appearance and the creation of quality content. This is because you also must make sure that your website is pretty easy to use. One of the most effective ways through which you can accomplish this is to improve WordPress website navigation.

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Although website navigation might not be receiving lots of focus from casual webmasters, it is important to offer a stunning user experience. If you make it easier for your users to navigate around your website and find exactly what they are looking for. It is highly likely that they will stick around and essentially become repeat visitors.

Now is the best time for you to stop setting your web pages to draft as you try to remove them from the WordPress menu. This is because you can easily learn to fully control the navigation menus that show up on your WordPress website. Check out our WordPress website customization services to know exactly what you can get if you trust us to make your site easier to navigate. We have a team of great experts and professionals who are happy to teach you the tips and tricks to improve the WordPress website navigation menu.

wordpress customization

Today, you no longer have to hack the WordPress menu for you to remove the “menu entries” to ensure they don’t show up.

Read on to understand the tips and tricks to improve your WordPress website navigation and how it can enhance your user experience.

How Improving Website Navigation Can Boost Your WordPress Website

Your website’s navigation menus comprise of multiple elements that users need to move around your site. For instance, many sites like sticking to a very simple navigation structure, which is outlined at the top of the webpage. Also, some sites include additional links on their footers as a way to make it easy for users.

If you do it in the right way, it will be very easy for you to customize the menu in a way that it will be very easy to navigate around the website. The WordPress dashboard has a very simple interface that makes it very easy for Flytonic’s WordPress experts to customize your website.

One thing that you should understand is that great navigation extends further than just the basic menu which includes simpler design choices such as colors.

How A Great WordPress Navigation Structure Benefits Your Website

It will make it very easy for your visitors to move around the website and find exactly what they are searching for. This is very important because many people come to your website looking for specific content.

It can also be a catapulting factor for a reduced bounce rate, which is always a great aspect.

It is a sign that you are committed to offering users a great experience, which will quickly promote trust with the users and ultimately make them repeat visitors.

If you are interested in improving your site’s navigation, then keep reading. We will provide you with tips and tricks on how you can improve WordPress website navigation without be required to start from scratch.

If you are familiar with most WordPress themes, you will notice how flexible it is to add links your navigation menu within the menus page.

You might not be aware of some of the following tips and tricks in the menu area. Some of these depend on the theme you are using, but most allow the following features.

Tips and Tricks to Improve WordPress Website Navigation

Adding Custom Post Types to Menu

Many themes have custom post types that are not shown by default as an option to drag to the menu itself. You would need to check these post types in the screen options area in the top right of the menus page. In this is example I am using the Product Review Theme which has promotion and products post types. You can see that these need to be checked to be displayed in the menu area. See screenshot below:

Adding custom post types in WordPress Menu

You will also notice other options that need to be checked for other sections described below.

Adding Custom Links to Menu

Perhaps you would like to add a link to the menu that is not part of your site or some other website. You can easily create links with your own text. Click the link heading to set the link information and add it to the menu as show in the screen below.

Adding custom links to the menu

Adding custom links to the a WordPress navigation menu

Opening Menu Links in New Window or Tab

Ever wanted menu links to open in a new window or tab? You can easily select which links in the menu to do this by clicking the “Open link in a new window/tab” checkbox in the link details. Be sure you have checked to enable this option in the screen options area.

add link target to menu

Checkbox in link area for target window:

target window in WordPress menus

Creating Drop Down Menu Effect

This question sometimes gets asked from members of Flytonic, so I thought I would cover this as well.  It is pretty simple to add a dropdown effect or submenu in the navigation menu if your theme style enables it.  All you need to do is make sure you drag your link below another link and then it gets indented like show below:

Creating dropdown effect in WordPress Navigation Menus

Creating a Dropdown effect with WordPress navigation links

Using Custom CSS Classes in the Menu

Using custom CSS classes in a WordPress menu link can enable you to perhaps higlighe a menu link and make it stand out from the rest of the link.  In this example I am going to show you how I used a custom css menu class to highlight a link in the Affiliate & Review Theme.

1.  First thing you need to is make sure you have enabled css classes in the screen options area:

Enable custom css classes in WordPress Menu

2.  Next, add you class to the particular menu link:

Custom CSS Menu Class in Navigation Menu

3.  In this case I added the class “blue_bg” to the Promotion menu link.  The class contains the following css in the stylesheet:

.nav li.blue_bg a {
 background:#006699 !important;
 color:#fff !important;
 }

Here is the effect of the CSS on the Promotion link:

new menu with custom css

You can see a blue background effect as a result of  the custom class “blue_bg”.  Custom CSS menu classes create several options for modifying individual menu links.

What is Link Relationship (XFN)

When you check the link relationship checkbox in the screen options area, you will see this textbox appear for all menu link details. Entering text in this box will add rel=’your input’ to the link code. WordPress defines this as “a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks”.

It basically makes your website links more semantic, thus adding more meaning to your site.

You can read more about XFN here.

link relationship XFN WordPress

Conclusion

A perfect website navigation structure is essential to offering an amazing user experience. While some visitors might not understand the effort you had to put to ensure your navigation is intuitive and simple, they will still enjoy the benefits. This is because it will be very easy for them to discover the content they are looking for very quickly. As a result, it is highly likely that they will not become disappointed in the process.


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  1. About Author: Flytonic
    Published by Flytonic's editorial team, specializes in wordpress, affiliate marketing and SEO related topics.