Most (and Least) Popular Agency Website Navigation Items

Your navigation is arguably one of the most essential parts of your website… but is yours what your customer’s are expecting?

Kyle Van Deusen

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Business Development

Kyle Van Deusen

Kyle Van Deusen

The Admin Bar

After spending 15 years as a graphic designer and earning a business degree, I launched my agency, OGAL Web Design, in 2017. A year later, after finding the amazing community around WordPress, I co-found The Admin Bar, which has grown to become the #1 community for WordPress professionals. I'm a husband and proud father of three, and a new resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Navigations
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The navigation on my website is something I haven't given a ton of thought.

Not to say it's not been considered and tweaked, but after the initial setup, not much has changed.

But it's arguably one of the most essential parts of your website. Whether or not someone finds what they need when they visit your website largely rests on how well your navigation performs.

And it got me thinking… What do most agencies use in their navigation?

Well… There was only one way to find out; Make an Airtable base and go through over 100 agency websites tracking every item in their top-level navigation.

And that's precisely what I did (using The Admin Bar Job Board listings as my dataset).

Results By Popularity

Here's a look at the most popular navigation items (in order). I tried to keep them exactly as presented, but I did combine things like “About”, “About Us” and “About Me” since they are nearly the same.

However, if someone used “Our Work” and “Our Projects” I left a distinction since those could have a slightly different meanings.

I'll include a few of my thoughts after the chart.

Navigation ItemCount
Contact (Contact Us / Contact Me)76
About (About Me / About Us)67
Services (Our Services)60
Home51
Blog42
Portfolio26
Our Work (My Work / Work)22
Get Started12
Resources10
Case Studies7
Pricing7
Work with Us (Work with Me)7
Articles6
FAQ (FAQs)5
Website Design (Web Design)5
Get in Touch4
Learn4
Reviews4
Shop4
Book a Call3
Clients3
Insights3
Let's Chat3
Projects (Our Projects / My Projects)3
Solutions3
Websites3
Who We Are3
Book a Consult (Book a Consultation)2
Branding2
Design2
Free Consultation2
Free SEO Audit2
Other Services2
Recent Work2
SEO2
What We Do4
Academy1
Accessibility Training Courses1
Agency1
Awards1
Book Your Discovery Call1
Build1
Care1
Care Plans1
Careers1
Client Portal1
Collaborate1
Company1
Connect1
Design & Development1
Develop1
Digital Cafe1
Digital Marketing1
Domain Names1
Engage1
Features1
Fix1
Free Growth Call1
Free Migrations1
Free Quote1
Freebies1
Get a Quote1
Graphic Design1
Guides1
Help1
How it Works1
Industries1
Info1
Inspire1
Let's Talk1
Maintenance1
Maintenance & Security1
Manage1
Market1
Marketing1
Meet {Name}1
Meet the Team1
News & Articles1
Newsletter1
Our Story1
Photography1
Plans & Pricing1
Print1
Process1
Promote1
Reports1
Request a Proposal1
Request a Quote1
Request Quote1
Resources & Learning1
Schedule a Free Call1
Sectors1
SEO & Marketing1
Set Up a Call1
Simplify1
Site Audits1
Sites1
Solved1
Start a Project1
Support1
Tech Trouble?1
Testimonials1
Tips & Apps1
Toolkit1
Videography1
Web Hosting1
Website Design & Development1
Website Services1
Website Support1
Who We Help1
WordPress1
WordPress Maintenance Plans1

A few thoughts

As I spent a little over an hour staring at over 100 navigations, I noticed a few things.

The Big 5.

It's pretty interesting that after “Contact”, “About”, “Services”, “Home”, and “Blog”, the drop-off is pretty significant.

Clear > Clever.

As someone visiting your website for the first time, I'm thinking in my “own language” and when sites use cutesy names it can make it hard to find what you are looking for.

Pricing, anyone?

What's the number one thing prospects are curious about before they hire you? Pricing! Yet, very few (only 7) of the sites I reviewed made mention of their pricing in the menu. I know that giving a menu of prices isn't always doable, but perhaps we should be doing more to explain how our pricing works.

Hamburger Menus

Listen… I stare at websites for a living and “get” how websites work… but even I had to do a double take when the desktop navigation was hidden behind a hamburger menu. It can look nice, but I think it makes it a lot harder to move around your website.

Calls to Action

Most websites had some kind of button or stylistic choice that made one navigation item stand out above the rest (usually “contact”) — but not all of them. In the monotony of going through these sites, it was pretty amazing how much that always caught my attention first.

Okay, so what?

Perhaps you're looking at this article thinking “okay, so what?”. And perhaps nothing in this little research project changes your mind — but doing this did make me look at my own navigation with a little more scrutiny.

My blog, for example, is listed as “Learn”. Perhaps that's not a very obvious word choice for my articles. And my primary CTA in my navigation is “Get Started”, which might be too strong of a call to action for someone just discovering me. They probably don't want to get started right away.

If nothing else, perhaps this inspires you to review your navigation and find ways it could be improved. Try and put yourself in your visitor's shoes and look at it objectively.

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Kyle Van Deusen

Kyle Van Deusen

The Admin Bar

After spending 15 years as a graphic designer and earning a business degree, I launched my agency, OGAL Web Design, in 2017. A year later, after finding the amazing community around WordPress, I co-found The Admin Bar, which has grown to become the #1 community for WordPress professionals. I'm a husband and proud father of three, and a new resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

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