Reshaping a Website Through Navigation
While we have rebuilt the CSI website from the ground up, one of the most impactful updates came from focusing on a single, often-overlooked piece: the navigation. It sounds simple, but improving how users move through the site fundamentally reshaped the entire experience. The results spoke for themselves. Navigation usage nearly doubled, and navigation-driven conversions increased by 177 percent.
Our old navigation
Following the Data
We started by digging into the data. Users who interacted with the navigation bounced at significantly lower rates and were far more likely to move through deeper journeys on the site. The problem was clear. Only 7.24 percent of users were engaging with the navigation, and of those users, just 0.67 percent were converting. If navigation was clearly a positive signal, the question became how to get more people to use it and how to make it work harder once they did.
The challenge wasn’t just design. Over time, our navigation had become a reflection of internal requests rather than user needs. Product wanted certain solutions elevated. Product marketing needed flexibility for launches. Communications had announcements to surface. Multiply that by years of growth, and you end up with a lot of pages competing for attention. Wrangling those needs while still creating a clear, intuitive experience is always difficult, but navigation can’t be built around internal org charts. It has to make sense to the person on the other side of the screen.
A Different Approach
We had to account for how people actually use the site across devices, screen sizes, and input types. The previous navigation leaned heavily on a mobile-first hamburger menu with sliding drawers and hover-based interactions. While visually interesting, it hid content, didn’t translate well across devices, and offered no direct path to convert within the navigation itself.
The new navigation shifted to a visible, always-on menu with clear, conversational labels, stronger hierarchy, and more intentional use of space. We added promoted content and a secondary sub-navigation for high-priority links, while also introducing conversion opportunities directly into the nav to reduce friction.
After launch, navigation usage increased from 7.24 percent to 14.2 percent, and navigation user conversion jumped from 0.67 percent to 1.86 percent. It reinforced a simple truth: good design isn’t just about how something looks, but how it works and drives meaningful outcomes.
Our new navigation
