Should the parent directory of the main site-navigation be clickable or not?!?
-
Highly discussed in our team is the question:
Should all parent navigation items be clickable, or only the ones that have no child menu appearing on mouse over?
At Starwood Germany, we would like to adjust the main navigation for all our websites in order to improve consistency and user friendliness. At the moment, most of our websites feature both clickable non-clickable parent items, depending on whether the items have a corresponding child menu (appearing on mouse over) or not.
See example here: http://www.imperialvienna.com/en
Some of our team members believe it might be irritating and/or confusing for the user if some items are clickable while others are not.
What do you think? Any thoughts and insights would be truly appreciated!
-
I would be considering the content the parent category could have, if for example the parent category content is not to dissimilar from that of the child pages then, perhaps it does not need to be a page in its own right, however, if the content provides an overview for the children pages of the category it might then be useful to be a page. Either way, I think consistency one way or the other is key here.
I Hope I have not caused any confusion
-
I think it should be one way or the other.... Especially if you want returning visitors they might not notice the first time but after a while people are bound to notice
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Thinking about redesigning site to reduce bounce rate - have a couple of questions
BACKGROUND Im looking at redesigning the website for a creative consultancy to improve the user experience. The website is mainly an image portfolio along with “press”, “our services”, “about us”, “contact” pages. I originally designed the website a few years ago and when we did, we wanted to make the image portfolio the most important feature. So we made it a full screen JS image slider with lazy loading of images, so that there are about 40 full screen images on the homepage that rotate. From a users point of view i still feel this is the best system as it very quickly allows them to browse the portfolio, which we looking for a creative consultancy is their UPS (unique selling point). The site has a very strong backlink profile compared to its competitors in the SERPS it has about 20-25% increase in PA and DA. But our site has been slipping down the rankings in recent years / months. From spot 1-2 to about spot 5-7. MY HYPOTHESIS I think that the reason the site may be dropping back in the SERP is that although its a very usable site, all its portfolio information is “too easy to find / view” and results in a user coming to our site, seeing everything they need to see, then bouncing back to the SERP. Our site has a bounce rate of 40-60%. Where as on competitors sites, their “portfolio” is a separate page off the homepage, so a users has to click through to a separate page, and even if they don't like the design content of the portfolio it doesn't get logged as a bounce. MY QUESTION Does bounce rate affect SERP ranking ? Could the sites SERP performance be improved by redesigning the site to put the portfolio on a separate page so a user would have to click through to it, if that would get the bounce rate down, would the site see a benefit even if people still clicked back to the SERP results eventually after seeing our portfolio, even though it wasn't a true 1 page bounce ? Dose time on site affect SERP ranking ? Is there a way i can see a competitor's bounce rate ? Would welcome any other thoughts inputs on this matter.
Web Design | | sl_pa0 -
Is it Bad to Break Up A Site into Multiple Sites?
I have a big cluttered website with endless pages. It's a non-profit that has content for patients, researchers, therapists, etc.. Would it be a bad idea to turn this cluttered site into 3 or more completely different sites, each focused on their specific demographic? Or should I just figure out how to organize the one site better? Thanks for your help!!!
Web Design | | bosleypalmer0 -
Is switching from a very old HTML table site to HTML5 going to make a big difference
Hello, My site owner has been having calls that our old HTML site needs to switch to HTML5. Is it really worth the ubgrade from an archaic HTML site? Please explain. Bob
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
Site health - webmaster tools
A bit of an odd one. In Webmaster Tools, there's the option to order sites by site health. When we do this our site - http://www.neooptic.com/ - is near the bottom, despite there being little or no crawl errors. Any ideas why this could be happening?
Web Design | | neooptic0 -
Main page redirect affecting search results?
Question.... A recent change was made to our page www.BGU.edu by a marketing person. So now when you type in www.BGU.edu it actually redirects to a different page www.BGU.edu/inquiry This is a really bad idea isn't it? I do not know enough about SEO to know a lot, and just joined SEOmoz but do I need to tell the admin to change it back?
Web Design | | nongard10 -
Image sliders & site speed
We are having a new website designed using WordPress and the Genesis framework. We wanted to include header image sliders on a number of internal site pages, but our designer says that sliders on more than just the home page will slow down the site significantly. How much could they slow down the site, and what can be done to minimize their effect on site speed?
Web Design | | GordyH0 -
How to serve a Mobile & Full Site using one URL?
Hello, Does anyone know of any resources or tutorials that outline how to serve a smartphone-formatted website using the same URL as the full site? I know that one solution is using media-queries to serve a seperate CSS stylesheet, but you still have the full HTML source code. In other words, I might want to serve a smartphone & desktop user different content, but under one URL. WP Touch (Wordpress Plugin) is a perfect example of what I mean, but how is it technically achieved? It serves two different sets of HTML for smartphone & full, but using one URL http://www.bravenewcode.com/store/plugins/wptouch-pro/
Web Design | | petecampbell-bmi0 -
Siloing and navigation menu linking
Still trying to understand siloing and how it relates to displaying links in the navigation menu. I'm working on optimizing a site for a lawyer friend. His site consists of 4 top level pages - index, attorney profile, practice areas, and contact. Then, there are 2 folders that contain all the 2nd-level pages for his 2 practice areas - personal injury and business litigation. The website in question is www(dot)comitzlaw(dot)com. From what I read about siloing before taking the 30-day SEOMoz trial (which I really like so far, by the way), I set the main (left hand) menu up as follows: The 4 top level pages only display the "collapsed" navigation menu, which only links to the index pages for personal injury and business litigation. Go anywhere in personal injury, and all pages link to the "expanded" personal injury navigation (links to auto accidents page, wrongful death, motorcycle accidents, etc.) but the "collapsed" business litigation section and vice versa for business litigation's links to personal injury. I did this because, as I understand, it keeps the practice area links on topic (like in a car sales example where you want a Ford section linking to Ford pages and Chevy pages linking to Chevy pages). Just wondering if anyone thinks I have this set up right. Wondering if the home page should display the "expanded" navigation menu instead or if all top level pages should show the expanded? Appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks.
Web Design | | c2g0