Tips for Your Website’s Navigation Menu

The navigation menu is a key element to your website design when it comes to user experience. Why? You want users to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. A well designed navigation menu will ensure that users are able to navigate your website’s content efficiently, which adds to a positive user experience.

Here are 4 tips for a winning navigation menu design:

Users should know where they are.

Consider using Breadcrumb navigation, which indicates the location of the user in relation to the web pages of your website. Including Breadcrumbs in your website design provides a clear location by indicating the “trail” of web pages and allows the user to keep track of their current location on your website.

Your logo should link to the homepage.

Website design best practices include placing your company logo at the top left corner (as we read left to right, top to bottom). Naturally, it has become best practice that clicking the logo brings the user back to the homepage. And thus, no need to include the “Homepage” link in the header.

Be intentional and keep menu items to a minimum.

Especially when you have lots of content, be thoughtful in how you organize and categorize. Use a drop-down sub menu to further categorize content so that you can limit the main menu to a maximum of 7 categories. Also, be thoughtful with page titles, choosing the wording carefully to ensure they are a clear reflection of the web page’s content.

Consider a menu that sticks.

A sticky menu keeps your navigation menu visible and therefore easily accessible at all times as the user scrolls down the web pages of your site. This is a no-brainer if your web pages are pretty content heavy. So if the user has a lot to scroll through and reaches the bottom of the web page, incorporating a sticky menu in your website design makes it so the user does not need to scroll all the way to the top in order to get to the menu and link to another page.

Need a website that offers the winning user experience that will help to grow your business? Please get in touch! Our web experts are ready to talk all things website design in order to take your business to the next level!