How to Redesign Navigation for a Content-Heavy Website
A website's navigation often grows one request at a time: another dropdown, a new department, an extra homepage link. Eventually, visitors need to understand the organisation before they can find anything.
Start by listing what people come to the site to do. Then check whether the content and labels give them a clear route.
Find out where people get stuck
Use support questions, site searches and conversations with visitors to identify common tasks:
- Find the current referral form.
- Check whether a service covers a location.
- Register for upcoming training.
- Find guidance on a particular topic.
Ask where people looked and what they expected to find. “The menu is confusing” becomes more useful when you know that visitors looked under Services for a form filed under Resources.
Keep the task separate from the proposed answer. Asking someone to “find a form in the Resources menu” tells them where to look.
Review the content before moving links
For each important page or document, record its audience, owner and purpose. Decide whether to keep, improve, combine or remove it.
Look for conflicting answers, obsolete files and duplicate pages. Moving these into a cleaner menu will leave the underlying problem unresolved.
Prioritise by use. Current service information needs a dependable route. Older news can remain searchable without taking up space in the main menu.
Our AMA Group project combined the AMA Group Solutions and AMA Group Ltd websites. The new structure also had to accommodate Capital SMART and APAS. The content decisions included which information served investors, which described the group and where the additional brands belonged.
Use labels visitors recognise
Internal names can make ownership clear to staff while confusing everyone else. Here are possible changes for a fictional resource organisation:
| Existing label | Question a visitor might ask | Label to test |
|---|---|---|
| Capability development | Is this training? | Training and events |
| Knowledge exchange | Does this contain guides or discussion? | Resources and guides |
| Programmes and initiatives | Where do I find help? | Find a service |
Keep specialist terms when the audience uses them. The aim is to choose familiar, accurate words.
Match the menu label to the destination. Someone choosing “Training” should immediately recognise that they have reached the right page.
Decide what belongs in menus, search and filters
The main menu should expose the important routes. Landing pages can explain the choices within a section; contextual links can connect related material.
A service page, for example, can link directly to eligibility information and its referral form. Visitors should be able to finish the task without starting again from the homepage.
Use search for people who know what they want and filters for collections with useful distinctions such as topic, date or audience. Those filters need consistent content fields.
The Brisbane South PHN refresh, delivered with Malu Creative, included content restructuring, a mega menu, and news and event filtering. Each gave visitors a different way to find information.
Test an outline before designing the menu
Write the proposed structure as a simple hierarchy. Ask people from the intended audience where they would look for the tasks you identified.
Record their first choice, any backtracking and whether they reached the answer. This is often called tree testing. It lets you check labels and grouping before investing in the visual design.
Keep direct success separate from eventual success. If eight of ten people find a form but three of those eight backtrack, the example result is 80% overall success and 50% direct success. Combining them hides the extra searching. Nielsen Norman Group explains how first clicks and directness help diagnose the structure.
| Observation | What to investigate |
|---|---|
| People choose the wrong top-level section | The label or grouping at the start of the route |
| They enter the right section but choose the wrong destination | Overlapping labels or unclear choices within that section |
| They find the page but cannot finish the task | The destination's content, form or instructions |
Change the parts that cause confusion, then repeat those tasks. Use the navigation worksheet to record the decisions.
Once the menu is built, test it on mobile and with a keyboard. Check that visitors can open and close submenus, see keyboard focus and distinguish a submenu control from a page link.
A navigation dropdown does not automatically need ARIA's menu role. That role brings application-style keyboard expectations. W3C's disclosure navigation example uses ordinary links and disclosure buttons for typical website navigation.
Assign someone to maintain the structure
Agree who approves new top-level sections and labels. Review unsuccessful searches and recurring support questions as the content grows.
Our Brisbane web design work includes content structure and navigation, so those decisions can be made alongside the page designs.