Your Website Has "Desire Paths" – And They Are Costing You
As teenagers, my friend and I visited an art gallery to try and become cultured. There, we saw the image above, ‘A Line Made by Walking’ by the British artist Richard Long.
Pretending to be cultured, I said this showed how stubborn human nature was. My friend (also pretending to be cultured) disagreed, saying the photo showed how someone had failed to build a path. We both felt very smug.
I later learned the line in the grass is called a ‘Desire path’. You see them everywhere and we were mostly right about why they happen. They show where paths should be *and* that people resent having to take a longer route.
The Cost of Ignoring Desire Paths:
I use this example when talking with organisations about their website information architecture (IA) and navigation. “I can’t find what I’m looking for” remains one of the most consistent user complaints we hear. Providing the right paths gives users a better experience – and it benefits organisations by reducing:
- Lost conversions
- User errors and bounce rates
- Contact burden for your customer services teams
How Research Reveals Your Digital Desire Paths:
Some IA questions can be answered with analytics. But it’s only through live user testing that you get the full picture. We run open live testing to show clients how users navigate their site. This helps to answer 3 critical questions:
- “Where do users WANT to go?”
(Analytics show what users do – testing reveals what they want, and why) - “Where do they get stuck?”
(Is your signage clear? Are your users finding dead ends?) - “How are needs and behaviours evolving?”
(New devices? New audiences? New expectations?)
The Fixes Are Often Simpler Than You Think:
IA research rarely requires a top-down re-organisation of your entire site (though if it does, then it’s better to know!). More often, we help clients with quick wins including:
- Refreshing your navigation menu (to improve first-click accuracy)
- Relocating important or hard-to-find content (to reduce time on task)
- Re-labelling your content and CTAs (to improve success rates and inclusivity)
Your Next Step
If you think your site could do more to help your users find their way around, contact us to book a free IA consultation.
We can work with you to develop a plan to capture your questions, test them with users – and give you quick and practical recommendations that will benefit your users, and your KPIs.
Richard Penny, Principal UX Consultant
