SearchStax Site Search solution gives marketers the agility they need to optimize website outcomes.
Product Overview
SearchStax Managed Search offloads Solr management, giving IT teams enhanced operational agility.
Product Overview
February 10, 2025
John Abbasi
|
In loving memory of your website navigation. … Here’s why you should be paying more attention to other methods of content discovery and delivery on your website instead of obsessing over your website nav.
For decades, website navigation has been the backbone of content discovery. Marketers and web designers have meticulously structured menus, submenus and category pages, assuming that visitors will follow a logical path to find what they need. Some marketers even refer to this as the “happy path.” But times have changed.
Today’s website visitors no longer rely on traditional navigation menus as their primary way to explore content. Instead, they gravitate toward onsite search, dynamic homepage elements and AI-driven recommendations to get answers faster. If marketers continue to focus only on optimizing website navigation, they risk ignoring how modern visitors actually engage with content—and losing potential conversions in the process.
So, are we really eulogizing website navigation? No. It’s still important for your navigation to be clean and organized in a functional manner. But it’s even more essential to explore why website navigation has become less effective over time, what’s replacing it and how marketers should adapt.
Until relatively recently, website navigation has been the de facto way of creating an organized path for website visitors to discover content and key pages. Dropdown menus, sidebars and mega menus have been staples of UX design, guiding visitors through an organization’s content.
However, data shows that visitors are engaging with these elements less and less. Some key factors driving this decline include:
With these changes, website visitors are shifting toward faster, intent-driven content discovery methods that leave your website nav in the digital dust.
Instead of following a rigid navigation structure, people are finding content through search, recommendations and intelligent discovery features. Let’s take a closer look at what’s replacing traditional navigation:
Many visitors now head straight to the onsite search bar to find what they need. In fact, studies show that users who engage with onsite search are more likely to convert than those who don’t. Why? Because search allows them to bypass navigation entirely and jump straight to exactly what they’re looking for.
We’ve become a search-first society in many ways. What’s the first thing you do when you need to find a piece of information? You type your search into Google. If you’re working on a project with the help of ChatGPT, you type your questions into its message bar and it returns what you need.
So when visitors land on your website, why should their first action be any different? Your onsite website search has to be optimized to match the standards of big search engines and AI tools.
Many visitors now head straight to the onsite search bar to find what they need. In fact, studies show that users who engage with onsite search are more likely to convert than those who don’t. Why? Because search allows them to bypass navigation entirely and jump straight to exactly what they’re looking for.
We’ve become a search-first society in many ways. What’s the first thing you do when you need to find a piece of information? You type your search into Google. If you’re working on a project with the help of ChatGPT, you type your questions into its message bar and it returns what you need.
So when visitors land on your website, why should their first action be any different? Your onsite website search has to be optimized to match the standards of big search engines and AI tools.
Rather than relying on a static navigation menu, many websites are featuring key content directly on their homepage. These elements include:
With the rise of voice search and chatbots, visitors are finding content through natural language interactions rather than by clicking through categories. Conversational AI tools can now answer questions, suggest content, and guide people without ever needing a navigation menu.
There are even AI-powered tools to help your site search solution understand the deeper contextual meaning of people’s searches and ensure your results page surfaces the right content every time.
Marketers who focus exclusively on optimizing their website’s navigation risk missing out on how visitors actually engage with content. Here’s why traditional navigation no longer works:
So, what should marketers focus on instead of just optimizing navigation? Lean into some of the content discovery methods we shared above. Here are the three key strategies that are replacing traditional menus with advice on how to approach implementation:
A well-optimized search function is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. Ways to improve onsite search include:
Tips for implementing:
Finding the right platform for your site search is the first step. Website experience owners often fail to recognize the power of onsite search and how it provides easily accessible first-party data that is invaluable for optimizing not only your search results, but your entire website experience.
Instead of forcing visitors to browse manually, serve up the right content at the right time. AI-driven recommendation engines can dynamically suggest blog posts, case studies or products based on a visitor’s past behavior and interests.
Tips for implementing:
Barriers for AI implementation often include trust of AI accuracy. That’s why it’s important to test and gradually implement AI. You also have to ensure that the use of AI stays within privacy and regulatory standards for your industry.
Make it easier for visitors to find what they need by prioritizing content discovery elements, such as:
Tips for implementing:
Most important here is to test, test, test. Heatmapping and session recording tools are some of the best ways to see how people are interacting with your content when they land on your site.
If you’re like the majority of organizations, your homepage is your highest visited page. Intentionality around what you feature above the fold and as people scroll is the difference between a high converting website and a stagnant site that misses out on converting high intent traffic.
The era of relying solely on website navigation is over. Visitors no longer want to dig through menus—they want instant, relevant content. The organizations that embrace this shift will create a more intuitive, frictionless experience—and ultimately, drive better engagement and conversions.
Again, your website navigation isn’t really dead per se; it just needs to be clean and available for those who do click around, while you focus on higher impact content discovery levers.
Is your website optimized for modern content discovery? Take a fresh look at your visitor experience and start testing search-first and AI-driven approaches today.
The Stack is delivered bi-monthly with industry trends, insights, products and more
