The Three Navigation Elements That Can Make or Break Your Website

Just because a website can have breadcrumbs, dropdowns, and sidebars…
Doesn’t mean it should. 

In today’s episode, we’re talking about three of the most overused—and often misunderstood—website elements: breadcrumbs, submenus, and sidebars. (And what they are if you are clueless!) 

I’ll walk you through when they help, when they hurt, and how to decide what your site actually needs to guide visitors (not confuse them).

Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts

If you're loving my eCommerce Made Easy Podcast, I'd be thrilled if you could rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Your ratings and reviews help me reach more listeners and empower more people like you to thrive in the online business world.

Just click here to head over to Apple Podcasts, scroll down, give us a five-star rating, and share what you enjoyed most about the episode in the "Write a Review" section.

If you haven't hit that follow button yet, now’s the perfect time! I have new episodes coming your way every week that you won't want to miss. Hit the follow button and stay up to date with the eCommerce Made Easy Podcast! Follow Now!

 🎉 Join my free Facebook group for online business owners: Website & Tech Tips for Online Business Owners! Get answers to your tech questions, promote your business, and connect with other entrepreneurs. Trainings, tools, and support to help you grow smarter—without the overwhelm.
👉 smarteronlinebusiness.com/facebook

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Website Navigation Elements
• 3:09 Breadcrumbs: When They Help or Hurt
• 4:56 Submenus and Dropdowns: Finding Balance
• 7:16 Sidebars: Still Useful or Outdated?
• 9:24 Website Clarity Test and Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Just because a website can have breadcrumbs, dropdowns, and sidebars doesn't mean it should. In today's episode, we're talking about three of the most overused and often misunderstood website elements: breadcrumbs, submenus, and sidebars, and what they are if you're clueless on what those are. I'll walk you through when they actually help, when they hurt, and how to decide what your site actually needs to guide visitors and not confuse them. So let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the show. Today we're talking about side menus, breadcrumbs, and drop downs. Now, if some of that doesn't sound familiar, like Carrie, what the heck are you talking about? I'm going to first define them really quick. So you don't know what we're talking about. So breadcrumbs are those little links that usually appear at the top of the page. They show the path that you took when you're clicking through the site. So it could be home, it could be women, women's tops, and then that's where you are. You're shopping for women's tops. So it will show that across the website, the different path that you came to get to there. That's what a breadcrumb is. Now, submenus are those drop-downs that appear when you hover over the menu or the navigation bar. Kind of like whenever you somebody has multiple services, you may have hover over services, and then there might be a drop-down with five more options underneath that. And then sidebars are those things that are along the side. They're little narrow columns on the side of the web page, and they're often filled with links like blog categories or email opt-ins, or if you're an e-commerce site and maybe your categories for your store. So all of these serve a purpose, but only if your visitor actually needs them to move forward. So we want to make sure that when if we use them, that they're effective and when we don't even really need them. Sometimes people put them in there just to be fancy. So let's first start off with breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs, like we said, are those links that go across the top of the page that tell you where you have been and where you came from. So this is very good to have when your site has many levels of product or content. So an e-commerce site, this would be very appropriate for maybe a blog where you have lots of different, you know, subcategories into it. That might be important too. But usually it's more for e-commerce sites. That's usually where I see this. And so a lot of people who sell services don't really need this. So when you have e-commerce, it's a very good idea that helps visitors backtrack where they were. So the example earlier, maybe I was shopping for clothing, women's clothing, and I have this trail of going back. I can click on the women's words and the breadcrumbs and get back to the other options for women's clothing. It's a nice quick way to get back and works really well then. But it's not something that you want if you only have a few core pages. It's just clutter and just extra stuff. We want to make sure that our navigation is already clear. If it's already clear, you really don't need them either. And we want to be designing for mobile first. And breadcrumbs usually just crowd the space, especially if your website is pretty simple. And usually I will actually, even on sites that have breadcrumbs and they're useful for desktop, we usually hide them when we're on mobile. So short answer is breadcrumbs are great for big websites and they're clutter for small ones. And then this is a big question I get a lot across all the people that we help, all the businesses that we help, whether it's e-commerce or course creators and coaches. Should you use submenus or drop downs? They can feel fancy, but they can easily frustrate users. I know I sometimes get really frustrated with submenus that drop down whenever they're not coded right, and it's really easy to move off of them, especially when they're multi-tiered, where you mouse over it, one drops down, and then more come out to the side, and you might try to go over there to mouse off on them, and somehow you've moused off of everything and you've lost where you were. So we don't really always want to use submenus. No, so when do we want to use them? We want to use them when you have more than six to seven pages linked across the top of your website. So say you need more than six or seven. Um, what you can do is you can group things clearly into a submenu. So let's say you have your services business and you do coaching services, but you have different levels or different types of coaching. You may want to put it in a submenu under services right there. If you're an e-commerce store, you're gonna want to put probably things under submenu. Say you sell clothing, you know, you'll probably want to have women's and then the submenu under there, like tops, bottoms, etc., men, top, bottoms, etc. Children. Um, that's when it's really common to have them and when it's very helpful. So I'll say that again, make sure that I'm clear here. So you do want drop downs whenever you have layered products, so products that can be grouped together and make sense together, like women's clothing or men's clothing, or if you have services that make sense for them to be grouped together, that way you don't have too many links across the top of your page. You do want to avoid menu overload and drop-down overload. Now, I do see this sometimes. Um, most likely most of you listening have experienced this as well. If your menu has more than three layers, it's way, way too deep. That's just not, it's too much. Too much for Google, it's too much for users. And if your visitor can't easily click on these drop-down menus on mobile, then that's also a problem, too. So you want to make sure that we can easily click on them on mobile. So then I get this question a lot too, especially from coaches and course creators, too. Are sidebars still useful? You know, the bar down the side. And they used to be used everywhere. Like that was the standard. When you were designing a website, you had a sidebar down the side. Didn't matter what you sell, sold, what you did, or who you were, you had a sidebar menu. So they work on blogs, and whenever we have content-heavy sites. So we want to have it whenever we want to show recent posts, maybe the categories for your blogs, maybe opt-ins. So this is something I see sometimes people don't have on their blogs now because side menus aren't quite the normal as much anymore, but it is necessary on blogs. It helps you get deeper down into those really good blog articles that may have been six months, nine months ago, but they're still really good and relevant. So having that side menu so people can go back to older archives, whether it's through a category hierarchy on a blog, or you know, August 2025, April 2025, you know, what whether it's by month, either. And then it also can be great for lead magnets or quick call to actions if they're well designed. This is something that we got to make sure that it's very well designed and isn't cluttered and it isn't distracting to the user to see. So I would most likely tell you to do it on blogs, and I would kind of hesitate on the lead magnets or quick call to actions on the side. You got to make sure that is well designed. So that's why I hesitate on that. So it's a little bit more advanced, but I want to let you know that it's there in case that is something that you do need. So they can really hurt you though on mobile. They can get pushed down or put into a weird spot on mobile. So if you do need it, make sure you're testing this on mobile and put it in a place that it makes sense on mobile. And if they're filled with a lot of noise, oh my goodness, you can probably remember back in the day ads, outdated content, and random links off to the side. Um, it just was something normal back in the day. And sometimes websites need to be cleaned up and getting that removed. So we definitely don't want to be doing that in our modern day. And when they detract from the main action you want people to take is also when you don't want them. So be cautious there, make sure they don't detract from what the main action you want people to take. So if your website includes elements, just because that's what websites do or how we used to do it, it might be time for strategic cleanup. And if you need help deciding what to keep, cut out, or restructure, you're always welcome to join our Facebook group at smarteronline business.com forward slash Facebook, and that will get you to our group. And you can join that and ask questions there. You can also join our weekly newsletter for simple, smart tips to make your website cleaner, faster, and more effective without the tech overwhelm. Just go to smarteronline business.com forward slash newsletter to sign up there. And then I want to do a clarity check and a clarity test with you. So I want you to open your website and look at one page that has a breadcrumb, a drop-down, or a sidebar. Ask yourself, is this helping people move forward? Or is it giving them more to sort through, more to decide upon? If it's not guiding decision or helping them navigate clearly, it may be time for that element to go. Or if you're the opposite way and you're like, oh, I've got way too many menu items at the top. Carrie said five to seven's about more ideal. Is there a way that you can group them together and put, you know, a set of them in a drop-down? So look at a clarity test from both directions. Do I need to remove something or do I need to add one of these elements? That's all we have for this week's podcast episode. I hope you thoroughly enjoyed it. Be sure to go to Apple and rate and review us. That really helps get the word out to others just like you that want help with their website without all the tech overwhelm. And we will see you next week.