Most website navigation is designed around organizational structure, not how users actually look for information. This creates a fundamental tension: the people who design navigation know the website content intimately, while the people who use it are often visiting infrequently with a specific task in mind. Standard navigation models (primary, secondary, tertiary, footer) force users to understand the organization's structure before they can find what they need.
During a redesign and migration to a new platform, there was an opportunity to challenge this assumption entirely and design a navigation system around user behavior, not internal logic.
"Popular Topics" navigation tailored to analytics
As a resident visiting the website for a variety of topics, I want an intuitive way to find what I need so I can quickly complete my tasks without needing to learn how the site is organized.
As a front desk staff member, I want information available to residents, so that routine inquiries are handled online and I can focus on complex cases.
I used Google Analytics data to identify the most frequently visited pages within each section of the website. This revealed what users actually wanted rather than what the organization assumed they wanted. From this data I designed a new navigation element called "Popular Topics", a contextual shortcut to the most-visited pages within any given section, without requiring users to navigate the full hierarchy.
The implementation was tiered based on page type:
Hub pages: 10 popular topic links
Main sections: 5 popular topic links
Subsections: 3 popular topic links
This standardization of defining how many links per page was intentional based on how many pages underneath each section existed, as well as helps when staff want to add or remove links, it gives a clear rule we can point to so we stay consistend and don't expand and create decision fatigue for users.
I configured custom Google Tag Manager (GTM) tracking to measure usage of each navigation type independently: primary, secondary, tertiary, footer, popular topics, and others.
The results were striking: Popular Topics consistently outperformed every other navigation type in usage, including the main navigation. This was not what anyone expected.
The most unexpected challenge emerged post-launch. Staff would periodically request changes to Popular Topics such as adding links they wanted promoted or removing ones they didn't recognize. Rather than managing these requests case by case, I built a repeatable governance framework: every change request required analytics justification. I used the GTM data to show staff exactly how frequently residents relied on this navigation, and why preference-based changes would actively harm the user experience they were trying to improve. Over time this shifted the conversation from "can you add this link" to "what does the data say."
A data-informed contextual navigation system built on real user behavior analytics, with custom tracking infrastructure to validate performance and an evidence-based governance model to protect its integrity over time.
Giving users navigation they want outperforms standard methods
Popular Topics navigation outperformed all standard navigation types in user engagement
Analytics confirmed the strategy optimized user journeys beyond any standard navigation approach
Established a repeatable, analytics-driven governance model for navigation decisions
Website earned a first-place CAPIO Epic award—one judge specifically noted plans to replicate this navigation strategy on their own government website
A process-first migration strategy combining a comprehensive URL redirect architecture, a content decision framework, and post-launch analytics monitoring—ensuring continuity of the user experience across an enterprise platform transition.
