šŸ“ø What (else) you can include on your About page

Plus 3 quick tips on single-word menu items, UX, dichotomies

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šŸ‘‹ Hey, it's Alex. Welcome to my weekly newsletter on photography websites.

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A long one on content ideas for your About page. Enjoy!

IN TODAY’S EMAIL:

  • āš”ļø 3 Quick tips: single-word menu items, UX, dichotomies

  • 🧠 Deep dive: What (else) you can include on your About page (12 ideas for your inspiration)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

QUICK TIPS

1. Try to use single-word menu items in your nav menu

Sometimes, you do need to use multiple words. A few examples come to mind:

  • Fine Art

  • Greeting Cards

  • Photo Tours

  • Client Area / My Account

  • Light painting

  • Advanced Search

Listing out specific gallery/portfolio names (common on portfolio sites) is also OK.

If you want to list blog categories in the navigation, place them in a dropdown menu under ā€œBlogā€. We’re referring here only to top-level menu items.

Aside from these examples, multiple-word menu items have disadvantages:

  • They occupy a lot of space (making horizontal navigation bars too long)

  • They take longer to read & understand (and all those split seconds matter)

  • They’re almost always unfamiliar (see the intro on the importance of familiarity)

So whenever possible, stick to single-word links in your navigation.

2. The most critical piece of user-experience on your website: getting your navigation menu right

Has your site’s menu also kept growing over time? Are you linking to old pages that no longer represent your photography business?

It’s time to clean it all up, reducing the number of top-level menu items (and using dropdowns in a smart way). If the navigation is overwhelming (or ā€œtoo cleverā€), all that organic traffic will get confused and leave your site more quickly.

83% of visitors leave a website because it takes too many clicks to get to what they want, that’s a huge number!

Familiarity allows for easy mental processing, it makes a website easy to understand and use. Besides the quality of the content, familiarity is sometimes what prevents users from leaving the site.

ā€œAs a rule, people don’t like to puzzle over how to do things. If people who build a site don’t care enough to make things obvious, it can erode confidenceā€

Steve Krug – ā€œDon’t Make Me Thinkā€

Everything you need to know about nav menus is here.

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