This isn’t a UX crime.
It’s a signal.

In my consulting work across D2C, SaaS, and content-first brands, one trend is becoming impossible to ignore: navigation is no longer how most users find things.
They search — and increasingly, they search like they speak.

Unless your system understands that language, the best-designed site in the world won’t help.

The Navigation Fallacy

When teams build navigation, they do it from an inside-out perspective:

• “How do we organize our products?”
• “What’s the logical category tree?”
• “Which pages should get top-level priority?”

But users operate with an outside-in mindset:

• “I want something lightweight for post-workout recovery.”
• “Is this covered by insurance?”
• “How is this different from the older model?”

That disconnect is where the friction begins.

In one project I reviewed recently, a wellness brand had beautifully structured menus — dropdowns for every therapy type, filterable tags, sub-pages grouped by city.

Yet 70% of users were skipping the menu entirely and using search.
And worse — they weren’t getting useful results.

What AI Search Understands (That Menus Can’t)

Site navigation works well when users already know:

• What they’re looking for
• What category it falls under
• How your site is structured

That’s rarely the case.

AI-powered search, on the other hand, does something navigation can’t: it interprets ambiguity.

A user can type:

…and the system can surface:

• Blog posts about postpartum insomnia
• A specialist who deals with maternal sleep disorders
• A relevant service plan or chat support

With keyword-based search or dropdown menus, that’s nearly impossible unless you’ve explicitly labeled everything just right.

What We Saw at Terrapy: Search as First-Click UX

When we implemented semantic search for Terrapy, a D2C wellness platform, we didn’t overhaul their site.
We simply made search front-and-center — not buried in a header, but visible and prominent on high-intent pages.

We also tracked not just what users clicked, but what they typed.

This gave us two major insights:

1. Users weren’t using site language.
   They weren’t searching “CBT programs in Bangalore.”
   They were typing “therapist for overthinking near me.”
2. Queries revealed intent patterns the navigation never accounted for — like:
   “therapy + insurance” or “evening slots only.”

These weren’t just better matches — they became inputs for product and content roadmap.

So Should You Kill the Menu?

No — but you should rethink its role.

Navigation provides structure.
Search provides discovery.

They solve different problems:

• Navigation is helpful for known paths.
• Search is essential for exploratory or intent-driven journeys.

What you need to ask is:

Where in your funnel does the user stop navigating and start asking?

That’s where AI search belongs — not as a fallback, but as the primary interface.