Optimizing Navigation Design

🔎 How To Redesign Complex Navigation: How We Restructured Intercom’s IA (https://lnkd.in/ezbHUYyU), a practical case study on how the Intercom team fixed the maze of features, settings, workflows and navigation labels. Neatly put together by Pranava Tandra. 🚫 Customers can’t use features they can’t discover. ✅ Simplifying is about bringing order to complexity. ✅ First, map out the flow of customers and their needs. ✅ Study how people navigate and where they get stuck. ✅ Spot recurring friction points that resonate across tasks. 🚫 Don’t group features based on how they are built. ✅ Group features based on how users think and work. ✅ Bring similar things together (e.g. Help, Knowledge). ✅ Establish dedicated hubs for key parts of the product. ✅ Relocate low-priority features to workflows/settings. 🤔 People don’t use products in predictable ways. 🤔 Users often struggle with cryptic icons and labels. ✅ Show labels in a collapsible nav drawer, not on hover. ✅ Use content testing to track if users understand icons. ✅ Allow users to pin/unpin items in their navigation drawer. One of the helpful ways to prioritize sections in navigation is by layering customer journeys on top of each other to identify most frequent areas of use. The busy “hubs” of user interactions typically require faster and easier access across the product. Instead of using AI or designer’s mental model to reorganize navigation, invite users and run a card sorting session with them. People are usually not very good at naming things, but very good at grouping and organizing them. And once you have a new navigation, test and refine it with tree testing. As Pranava writes, real people don’t use products in perfectly predictable ways. They come in with an infinite variety of needs, assumptions, and goals. Our job is to address friction points for their realities — by reducing confusion and maximizing clarity. Good IA work and UX research can do just that. [Useful resources in the comments ↓] #ux #IA

One of the most fascinating projects I have worked on eventually became US Patent… a system for multi-modal journey optimization. At first glance, it sounds straightforward: get a traveler from point A to point B as quickly as possible. But in reality, this is not a “shortest path” problem. It is a problem of navigating combinatorial explosion under uncertainty while still producing results that humans will actually use. The lesson was simple, but profound: a single “optimal” route is often the wrong answer. In practice, commuters do not blindly follow whatever the algorithm declares “fastest.” They balance hidden costs (number of transfers, reliability, waiting time) against raw travel time. A route that is one minute slower but has one fewer transfer will often be preferred. We approached this by abandoning the idea of returning just one solution. Instead, we designed an iterative search that keeps a fixed-length priority queue of candidate paths, pruning aggressively to keep the search tractable, but always preserving multiple high-quality alternatives. The output is a set of Pareto-efficient options: fast, but also different enough that a user can choose the one that fits their risk tolerance, comfort level, or schedule flexibility. This project shifted how I think about optimization. The real challenge isn’t mathematical purity, it is making decisions robust to the messiness of the real world. If the solution space is reduced to a single “optimal” point, you risk oversimplifying reality and delivering something no one wants to use. When we expose the trade-offs explicitly, we help people make better decisions.

Just finished a strategic session with an e-commerce client and it revealed some great insights. Particularly on their heatmaps. 90% of this client’s traffic is mobile. But users weren't scrolling past the first section. Why? Because homepage was designed for desktop users who don't exist. Simple mistake, but one we see all the time. Here's what the data showed: - The pop-up problem - 95% of interactions were people trying to close it, not convert - The scroll-depth disaster - Mobile users dropped off after barely one scroll - The women's category surprise - High click-through rate despite lower sales volume - The navigation nightmare - Users couldn't find what they wanted This is what we did: ➡️ Completely rethought the mobile experience. ➡️ Added anchor navigation that drives users deeper into the page. ➡️ Used psychological triggers like the Zeigarnik effect (Google it!) to create curiosity gaps. ➡️ Moved trust elements above the fold. ➡️Fixed the search functionality for ad traffic. This is why we did it: People don't scroll on mobile - they tap. So we gave them clear pathways to jump to relevant sections. When they anchor down to their desired content, they see everything they skipped. Curiosity drives them back up to explore. Result: Higher engagement, deeper page exploration, better conversions. It’s 4 weeks before this new design goes live. The lesson is simple… Desktop-first thinking kills your mobile conversions. 90% mobile traffic demands mobile-first strategy. Not mobile-friendly design. Mobile-first psychology. There’s a difference.

We recently helped a leader in data enterprise struggling to guide different users to the right product pages. Their main issues were: → Users for Product A didn't want Product B info. → Navigation led to unified, confusing pages. → All visitors ended on the same page, despite interests. So, how did we simplify navigation for different users? 1/ Distinct Tabs: → Created tabs for 'Product A' and 'Product B.' → Each tab focused on its audience. → Visitors found their desired product easily. 2/ Efficient Space Use: → Presented only the key options. → Reduced the number of links. → Minimized cognitive overload for users. 3/ Intuitive Layout: → Organized tabs logically. → Added a clear overview for each product. → Linked related features and useful resources. ___ This year, I audited 400+ B2B websites to uncover why they fall short of delivering results. In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing the most common issues and how your team can fix them.

Your website's navigation could be the key to better conversions. When visitors land on your site, they should feel guided—not lost. Poor navigation doesn't just frustrate users; it costs you inquiries, sales, and trust. Here's a quick story: A client came to us with a cluttered navigation bar—too many options, vague labels, and no clear direction for users. It was overwhelming their visitors and burying key pages like their services and contact forms. Here's how we fixed it: 👉 Simplified the Menu We reduced the number of items in the navigation bar, focusing on essential sections only. 👉 Made Labels Clear and Direct Vague names like "What We Do" became straightforward titles like "Our Services" and "Get Started." 👉 Added Breadcrumb Navigation For deeper pages, we introduced breadcrumbs so users could easily track their journey and backtrack without confusion. 👉 Optimized for Mobile On mobile devices, we implemented a responsive, collapsible menu to keep navigation accessible and clean. The results? ⇾ A 20% increase in conversions ⇾ Lower bounce rates ⇾ Higher page retention times By making navigation clear and intuitive, users found what they needed faster, and frustration melted away. Wanna know how refining your navigation could improve your website's performance? Request our in-depth website assessment tailored to your business here: https://lnkd.in/ePeeKYj7 P.S. If this tip resonated, share it with your network and follow me for more practical advice every Tuesday!

𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤 (𝐋𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐨𝐧) 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 📊✨ Want to make your dashboards feel intuitive, clean and easy to navigate? 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐨𝐧 is one of the simplest, most effective design tricks to get there. It’s a core concept from the 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 and once you see it; you’ll never unsee it. 🚀 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐨𝐧? When elements are placed within the same container, our brains naturally assume they’re related. It’s why buttons inside a box feel “grouped” and why dashboards with clear sections feel more organised. 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐈𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐈 𝐃𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬: 1️⃣ 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬, 𝐁𝐨𝐱𝐞𝐬, 𝐨𝐫 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐬 — Place similar KPIs in a shared container to show they’re connected. For example, group Revenue, Profit and Margin in one box to signal they’re related. 2️⃣ 𝐃𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐔𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐭𝐥𝐞 — Use light grey or neutral colours to define regions for filters, KPIs and trend analysis. These subtle differences in background create visual separation without clutter. 3️⃣ 𝐀𝐝𝐝 𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭 — Add a clear header to each region (like “Financial Summary” or “Trend Analysis”) so users instantly know what they’re looking at. 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐈𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬: ✅ 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 — Users can spot related metrics at a glance. ✅ 𝐅𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐍𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 — Users aren’t scanning the whole screen—they’re scanning logical groups. ✅ 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐂𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐚𝐝 — The brain sees clear groupings, so it doesn’t have to “figure it out.” ⚡𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬: You don’t need thick, bold borders to create regions. Use 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬 or 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 to group elements naturally. It looks cleaner and more professional. Want dashboards that feel intuitive from the first glance? 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 for more design tips, templates and Power BI hacks! 🎉 𝘋𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘙𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴? 𝘋𝘳𝘰𝘱 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘸! 👇 #powerbi #dataanalytics #designtips #matthewspuffard #uiux

Menu navigation is an afterthought for most brands. But can be the source of many issues and missed opportunities. We’ve done a lot of navigation testing lately. Primarily with brands that were struggling with product discovery. Meaning they weren’t getting users from the homepage (landing pages) to product pages at an acceptable rate (50-70%). In our example today, CROSSNET has a navigation that could be worth addressing (only if there is a real data backed problem). The shopping experience is funneled through a collection page with 14 different products. This isn’t a massive collection by any means... but sometimes introducing too many options during the discovery stage can add unneeded friction. This is why I would recommend direct product linking. Pull out that best selling product or two in the shop sub nav. In this case the original game, so that users can drop right into that PDP. Wait to introduce other options like add-ons, cross sells, bundles until the user is ready to buy. This simple improvement could lead to 20%+ increase in users getting to a product page. And… the downstream effects will follow. See a case study for how this worked for another brand in the comments. ______________________________ Chris Meade Greg Meade Does the data say this is an issue worth addressing? #conversionrateoptimization #abtesting #shopify #ecommerce