Check Your Website Navigation With Five Customer Tasks

Test website navigation by giving people tasks, not by asking whether they like the menu. Observe whether they can find the right information without coaching. A label that feels obvious to the business may be unclear to someone encountering its services for the first time.

Choose five realistic tasks
Ask a tester to find the relevant service, determine whether the business serves their location, review an example of the work, understand what happens next, and contact the right person. Adapt the tasks to the business. An online shop might substitute returns information or product dimensions for service coverage.

Observe the first choice
Start each task from the homepage and then repeat selected tasks from an article or service page. Note which link the tester chooses first, where they hesitate, and whether they recover from a wrong turn. Do not explain the menu while the task is in progress. The navigation guide provides background for interpreting the results.

Fix labels before adding more menu items
If visitors cannot identify a service, a clearer label may solve the issue. Adding every page to the main navigation can make the original problem worse. Group related pages in a way customers understand and use contextual links for deeper detail. The internal linking discussion explains the relationship between pages.

Repeat on a phone
Check that opening, closing, and following the mobile menu works without covering essential controls. Make sure the visitor can tell which page they reached. Testing with actual tasks often reveals friction that a desktop screenshot misses.

How many testers do you need?
Begin with a few people unfamiliar with the site and treat their observations as directional, not a statistical guarantee. Look for repeated obstacles, improve the specific issue, and retest. The mobile design article is useful when the task succeeds on desktop but becomes awkward on a smaller screen.