Website Usability Testing – How Menu Items Impact Sales

When looking at website usability one of the main elements you want to look at is your menu.  The goal of every element of your landing pages and website should be to provide a path of least resistance to the end goal you want to achieve, which is usually making a purchase with e-commerce stores.

This is why it is important that when testing you also leverage website usability testing to get better engagement from your site visitors.  Today we are going to look at one test we conducted on the menu for an e-commerce company.

Website usability testing – how menu items impact sales

The menu on your site, especially with e-commerce, should be the first step with increasing website usability. Having too many elements on the menu, clunky sub-menus, and too many choices can lead to friction in the shopping experience and lead to lower overall sales conversions.

So it is crucial when doing website usability testing that you pay attention to your menu items.

In the case of one company, they had a menu that contained a few top-level categories and as you moused over the main categories it gave you several other options to choose from as you can see in the image below.

menuorig
This option provided the website visitors with many options to find what it is that they are looking for.  So in an effort to increase website usability and ultimately increase sales conversions, we tested a more streamlined menu that gave the visitors quick options to find what they are looking for and removed the sub-menu options.

menunew
As you can see we incorporated the MAIN product offerings easily in the new menu. Simply click and be taken to your selection to begin shopping.  Essentially removing a top-level step in the shopping process.  When doing website usability testing it is important again that you make it easy for the visitors to find what they are looking for.

The results of the new menu?

menuresults
The new menu produced an increase in successful checkout conversions by almost 12%.  How much of an impact would 12% more sales have on your online store?

Be sure to pay close attention to your menu on your site and don’t have too many unnecessary steps that can hinder the usability of the site overall.

There you have it, a quick case study centered around website usability testing and the importance of paying attention to the menu options you are giving your visitors.

Be sure to like, comment, share and subscribe.

If you want more information on how you can increase your website usability and want to do some website usability testing on your own site be sure to reach out for a no-obligation conversion acceleration session.

Now get out there and test your menu elements on your store.