Why users can't find important content — and how a new navigation structure solves it

The marketing team optimises landing pages to improve the performance of paid traffic. But almost 40% of total revenue comes from non-paid traffic that lands on many different subpages.

Watching user behaviour, we spot a pattern: users who use the navigation jump back and forth between entries before finding the right one — almost by accident.

The UX expert on the team confirms it: the site's structure has been bothering him for a while. To find out how big the problem really is, we take stock.

Users structure content completely differently than the company does.

We give 30 users 50 index cards each with different website content. Then we ask them to sort those into categories and name the categories. That helps us find out which content belongs together.

On that basis we run a half-day workshop with the head of marketing, a UX expert and a team lead from customer support. Together, a new structure emerges.

The new structure is validated with another tree test, using the same conditions and tasks.

The team decides to implement the new navigation structure as part of the website redesign. Instead of relying on design tweaks, user feedback was used to really understand the problem and build a tailored solution.