The most common mistake brands make is cluttering their precious main navigation with non-shopping links like "About Us" or "Contact Us." This happens because founders believe every important page deserves top-level visibility, but it creates a huge drag on product discovery. As Kurt Elster puts it on Ecommerce Conversations, your main navigation is "precious real estate" that should be "devoted exclusively to shopping." He points out that if you look at any major retailer, they move all the administrative links into a secondary header menu or, more commonly, the footer. The cost of a cluttered navigation is a confused customer. Adam Kitain on Honest Ecommerce calls this out as putting "dumb stuff in their navigation." The fix is simple: ruthlessly edit your menu to only include product categories and shopping-related links. An A/B test comparing a cluttered nav to a clean one is an easy win.
The second mistake is guessing what should be in your navigation instead of using your own data. It's easy to fall into this trap by just copying competitors or organizing your navigation based on how you think about your products, not how your customers do. The real damage is that you might be burying your best-selling categories three clicks deep while giving top billing to a low-performing collection. Kurt Elster suggests a straightforward fix: use your analytics to find out which pages generate the most revenue and prioritize those. On The eCom Ops Podcast, Jon MacDonald reinforces this by speaking on the need to analyze user behavior to find conversion roadblocks, which is exactly what a poorly organized navigation creates.
The third big mistake is focusing on tiny, insignificant changes instead of taking big swings that can meaningfully improve product discovery. People fall into this because small changes feel safer and easier, but they rarely produce significant wins. Adam Kitain talks about this exact idea of "Big Swings vs. Small Wins" on Honest Ecommerce. A big swing for your navigation isn't about changing the font color; it's about fundamentally rethinking its structure based on a clear hypothesis. For example, testing a simplified, category-focused navigation against your current, more complex version. The cost of only making small tweaks is slow, incremental growth, while your competitors might be unlocking huge gains with more ambitious tests. The fix is to embrace a real testing mindset and prioritize bold experiments that have the potential for a real impact.
A well-tested navigation doesn't just look clean; it acts as an invisible guide, effortlessly leading customers to the products they want to buy.
