Most decisions about navigation are made on instinct — what feels logical, what looks clean, what the designer prefers. These are valid inputs, but they’re incomplete. Navigation is one of the most consequential parts of a site’s user experience, and its performance is measurable. You don’t have to guess.
Here’s how to approach it.
Click tracking on navigation items
The most direct signal is which navigation items get clicked and which don’t. In Google Analytics 4, you can see clicks on menu links as events. In a more configured setup, you can set up click tracking specifically on navigation elements and get a clear picture of the traffic flow.
Items that never get clicked are candidates for removal or consolidation. Items that get disproportionate clicks might deserve more prominent placement or a more descriptive label.
Bounce rate by entry page
If visitors land on a page and leave immediately without clicking anything, navigation might not be helping them find what they’re looking for. Look at pages with high bounce rates and consider whether the navigation from those pages gives visitors clear options to explore further.
This is particularly relevant for home pages and landing pages where the navigation is often the primary wayfinding tool.
Internal search terms
If your site has a search function, the search terms your visitors use are a direct signal of what they can’t find through navigation. Common search terms that correspond to content that exists on the site — but isn’t clearly accessible through navigation — represent a navigation failure.
Review your internal search data regularly. If people are searching for “returns policy” and you have a returns page that isn’t linked from the navigation, that’s a specific, fixable problem.
Funnel analysis for e-commerce
On WooCommerce stores, track the path visitors take from category navigation to product page to cart. Navigation that leads to high drop-off rates between category and product, or between product and cart, might be organizing products in a way that creates friction.
Heatmaps
Tools like Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity show where visitors click and how far they scroll. For navigation, heatmaps reveal which menu items attract attention and which are ignored. They can also show whether visitors are noticing your mega menu panels or missing them entirely.
The test-and-measure cycle
Use this data to form hypotheses, make specific changes, and measure the result. Change one thing at a time so you can isolate what’s working. Navigation changes that improve click-through to key pages are almost always worth making, regardless of whether they match the original design intent.
Navigation is infrastructure, and like any infrastructure, it should be maintained based on evidence. Analytics gives you that evidence.