The leading Movie magazine, EMPIRE  recently restructured their website navigation and placed emphasis on certain parts of the site. The original navigation items were: Daily Quiz, News, Blog, Video, Reviews, Future Films, Feature, Interviews, Images, Competition, Forum & Magazine. (See below)

The new navigation now has 13 nav-items. The nav-item, Video has been removed since there is a video player on the page.  Two items:  iPad & Podcast have been added onto the main navigation.

With the increase use of iPads and its specific page layout, Empire, have added an iPad edition, which can be accessed through the main navigation. This makes it easier for users to access the application, if they have an iPad. The label ‘news’ has been changed to ‘Movie News’ to indicate to users that the use is movie orientated. This gives users a clear indication of what to expect in that section.

More focus has also been put on people logging into their account, registering and signing up to a weekly newsletter. These options are more prominent in the header, thus making it easier for users to access it.  Furthermore, you can also see that EMPIRE gives emphasis on social networking by adding it in the header. Users are able to clearly see a like & follow us buttons, which will allow them to get all the latest information via social networks.

Last Word

The above example shows that small changes can be effective and have big results such as increase click rates & traffic to that content. These changes do not rely heavily on your resources to be carried out. They will help you get the most out of the current structure without having to spend a lot on redesigning & re-architecting.