Website Navigation Menus: Types & Best Practices
We always tell clients that a website is the first impression your business makes on someone. Just like the feeling you get walking into a store, or when you’re looking at houses or apartments. First impressions are everything, and when it comes to company websites, the structure and usability of your navigation matters more than you might think.
Website menus provide a “10,000-foot view” of the products and services you offer, and should guide site visitors on a journey to find information as quickly and easily as possible. If your website navigation menu is outdated, confusing, or poorly designed and structured, people will get frustrated and take their business elsewhere.
In this blog, we dig into the different types of menus on websites, the best practices for each, and how to decide which option is best for your website.
Two Different Types of Website Menus
A well-designed website menu reduces the number of clicks (steps) it takes for potential customers to reach the product or information they want. Because the faster a customer can find what they need, the more likely they are to purchase the product or contact your sales team for a quote or additional information.
When designing your website menu, the two main styles to consider are standard/classic and mega/drop-down. Each option serves a different purpose and has a different functionality; choosing one over the other depends on factors such as your industry, your business size, and the number of product/service categories or pages on your website. How the menu will display on mobile devices is also important to consider — that’s where a handy style known as the “hamburger menu” comes in.
Standard/Classic Website Menu
On a desktop, standard website navigation menus consist of a long horizontal bar with main categories such as About Us, Products (or Services), Resources, and Contact Us. If additional topics or pages fall under each category, they will display in a vertical drop-down.
We’ll use our sister company, Evolve Payment, as an example of a standard website menu. As you can see, the drop-down neatly displays options under the Solutions category, creating a clear path for users.
Image: Evolve Payment’s website featuring a mega menu.
When should you build (or keep) a standard website menu for your site?
This simplified structure is best for smaller, non-ecommerce websites. A standard menu can get a bit out of control if you have (or plan to add) e-commerce or offer multiple services.
Imagine you offer 15 services and try to fit them all in a vertical drop-down. Anyone who clicks a category will scroll for days — and that creates a frustrating user experience. The answer to that problem is the second website navigation option: the mega menu.
Mega/Drop-down Menu
This type of website navigation structure features a large drop-down panel to display options. The multi-column format keeps everything at the top of the page, giving site visitors a clear, organized view. In addition to providing an improved user experience, you can have a lot of fun with this type of website menu by incorporating branded visuals, icons, grids, colors, and more!
The Evolve Systems website features a mega menu to support a long-term content strategy involving multiple subcategory pages. As an agency with a professional but playful brand, we incorporated colors and personalized imagery to add visual appeal.
Image: Evolve Systems’ website featuring a mega menu.
Here’s another example: This mega menu website navigation appears on the site of one of our clients, an environmental engineering firm. As you can see, they offer a depth of services and need a structure capable of supporting that. Even if you don’t have quite as many services to display, you can build this type of structure and add an image to temporarily fill in the empty space as you slowly add categories/pages.
Image: Pinnacle Engineering’s website featuring a mega menu.
When should you select a mega menu for your website navigation?
There are two scenarios where we recommend upgrading your website navigational structure to a mega menu.
- You have a large number of product or service categories and pages on your website. In this case, a website development agency will design a new menu that recognizes the existing navigation.
- Your long-term goals involve expanding your product/service offerings, which will require adding more pages. Here, a mega menu establishes a foundation you can build on at your own pace.
Now that we’ve covered the two primary types of menus on desktop versions of websites, let’s talk about the importance of user experience on mobile devices.
An Optimized Experience for Desktop & Mobile Users
Other types of menus for websites are available as well. Earlier, we mentioned the use of “hamburger menus,” a condensed version of a website navigation designed for mobile devices. Standard menus and mega menus both look and perform differently in this condensed format; however, the strategy behind their structure remains unchanged.
There are also side navigation menus and “sticky” website menus, both of which serve a specific purpose. Deciding when to incorporate these additional options depends on several factors, including your content strategy and overall website design.
Hamburger Menu
People spend a lot of time on their phones. In your day-to-day use, you’ve likely come across websites that don’t work well on a smaller screen. The navigation menu is tiny, and the buttons are difficult to see. It’s a frustrating user experience, to say the least.
That is why it’s important to design your website with mobile-friendly features, such as a hamburger menu. This type of website navigation menu appears in the top-right corner of a device screen and gets its name because the three lines resemble a hamburger. When site visitors click the lines, the website navigational structure opens in a condensed format that fits the device’s screen size.
Here is how Evolve Systems’ homepage looks on a mobile phone. The image to the right shows how the navigation displays after someone clicks the hamburger menu icon.
Image: Evolve Systems website homepage and menu drop-down shown on a mobile device.
My company’s website has a hamburger menu for mobile, so we’re all set, right?
Maybe. Just like anything on a website, hamburger menus can become outdated, leading to slower load times and other issues that affect user experience. It never hurts to have your website development partner conduct a speed and UX audit to help you identify areas for improvement. That could be modernizing the look of the menu, adding new features, or updating colors and fonts to meet current accessibility standards.
Side/Vertical Menu
Sometimes, a website needs a little something extra to help people navigate through pages and content. For blogs, e-commerce sites, and content-heavy websites, a side or vertical menu can be used. Side menus appear on the right- or left-hand side of a page and can exist alone or to complement your top navigational menu. This type of website menu can be designed to slide out or remain fixed as someone scrolls, depending on the need.
When should you select a side/vertical menu for your website navigation?
The answer is based on need versus want. Adding a side navigation bar can make a website look cluttered, especially when it’s competing with a top navigation bar. Reserve this option for larger, more complex websites that involve multiple categories and sub-categories.
Sticky Menu
Have you ever visited a website where the navigation bar disappears as you scroll down the page? Requiring people to scroll back to the top of a page creates a frustrating user experience. Yes, you can add a "back to top” button, as many sites do, but there's another option available, too.
A sticky or fixed website menu is more about functionality versus style, as the feature can be added to nearly any type of menu. As the name implies, this type of menu stays at the top (or side) of a page as someone scrolls, providing easy access to navigation categories from anywhere on the page.
When should you add this functionality to your website navigation?
We recommend implementing a sticky navigational menu in most situations because any web page requires at least some scrolling. Cases where a sticky menu is most critical, however, is when you have long pages of content or the customer journey involves someone viewing multiple pages/categories across your website (such as viewing and comparing different products and services).
In the end, the goal is to provide a positive user experience through clear, consistent, and intuitive design that reduces the number of clicks it takes to get somewhere. There’s no need to overcomplicate things or add unnecessary features, as that will only confuse users.
We know it’s a lot to think about! But a website partner can help you weigh the pros and cons of each option and determine the best path forward for your business.