Convenient menu on the site - our 9 principles
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 6:04 am
The website menu is the most important navigation element on a web resource. Its convenience and thoughtfulness often determine whether a user will stay on your website. The same as a visitor to a restaurant makes his first conclusions about the establishment based on the menu offered by the waiter.
In this article, we will examine the principles that will allow you to correctly orient the user, helping him to move to the section he is interested in as quickly as possible.
1. Intuitive clarity
First of all, the menu should be located in the expected place for the user. You should not be overly creative here. When a person visits the site from a mobile device, the menu is conveniently presented in a traditional way - the user should see three small horizontal lines.
Look, this is exactly how it is implemented on the website we developed for an elite restaurant of European cuisine:
2. Breadcrumbs to the rescue
We recommend using highlighted links that remind the user where they are. This allows them to interact with the menu more effectively and generally navigate the web resource more easily. Breadcrumbs are not part of the menu, but work partly in conjunction with it. This is another example of how everything is very closely interconnected in web development .
For example, on the website we created for the technology company Relematika , the menu item Products includes a sub-item Solutions for digital substations. This is reflected in the breadcrumbs. Thanks to this, the user understands the logic of his path through the site. This creates a certain comfort.
3. Compliance with SEO objectives
It is important that the section titles highlight keywords. In general, this is a broader issue concerning the semantic design of the site. Often, just by glancing at the drop-down menu, you can draw conclusions about what queries the site is being promoted by. After all, the menu sub-items lead to certain sections of the site.
If section names are invented "as is necessary", further promotion of the site may be complicated. Because the orderly logic of the hierarchy of meanings is violated.
Here a lot depends on the web developer's approach. In our agency, semantic design is used everywhere.
4. Quite large size
The menu should be readable at lightning speed. It should not be too small, it should not merge with the background. The menu should use easily readable fonts. What you definitely should not do is reduce the font uae whatsapp number in the menu items, trying to fit as many items as possible. For this, there is a drop-down menu, which we will discuss later.
5. Static
We recommend using a static menu that retains its location when scrolling the site. This way, once in any section, the user will not have to scroll back for a long time to return to the menu. This is especially important with cold clients - they are still not very interested in the company's services and any little thing can distract them, forcing them to leave the site.
6. Drop-down menu for large projects
Despite the rapid development of web technologies, nothing better than a drop-down menu has been invented yet. Objectively, it is better to hide a huge number of section names, otherwise the entire first screen of your site will be occupied by a list of menu items. And this would look unaesthetic. In addition, too much choice confuses the user.
Take a look at this example of a drop-down menu used in the online store of men's cosmetics we developed:
Everything is structured and convenient. By clicking, for example, on hair lotions, the consumer finds himself on a page with products from this group. Thus, the path from the main page to a specific lotion will take only 3 clicks.
In this article, we will examine the principles that will allow you to correctly orient the user, helping him to move to the section he is interested in as quickly as possible.
1. Intuitive clarity
First of all, the menu should be located in the expected place for the user. You should not be overly creative here. When a person visits the site from a mobile device, the menu is conveniently presented in a traditional way - the user should see three small horizontal lines.
Look, this is exactly how it is implemented on the website we developed for an elite restaurant of European cuisine:
2. Breadcrumbs to the rescue
We recommend using highlighted links that remind the user where they are. This allows them to interact with the menu more effectively and generally navigate the web resource more easily. Breadcrumbs are not part of the menu, but work partly in conjunction with it. This is another example of how everything is very closely interconnected in web development .
For example, on the website we created for the technology company Relematika , the menu item Products includes a sub-item Solutions for digital substations. This is reflected in the breadcrumbs. Thanks to this, the user understands the logic of his path through the site. This creates a certain comfort.
3. Compliance with SEO objectives
It is important that the section titles highlight keywords. In general, this is a broader issue concerning the semantic design of the site. Often, just by glancing at the drop-down menu, you can draw conclusions about what queries the site is being promoted by. After all, the menu sub-items lead to certain sections of the site.
If section names are invented "as is necessary", further promotion of the site may be complicated. Because the orderly logic of the hierarchy of meanings is violated.
Here a lot depends on the web developer's approach. In our agency, semantic design is used everywhere.
4. Quite large size
The menu should be readable at lightning speed. It should not be too small, it should not merge with the background. The menu should use easily readable fonts. What you definitely should not do is reduce the font uae whatsapp number in the menu items, trying to fit as many items as possible. For this, there is a drop-down menu, which we will discuss later.
5. Static
We recommend using a static menu that retains its location when scrolling the site. This way, once in any section, the user will not have to scroll back for a long time to return to the menu. This is especially important with cold clients - they are still not very interested in the company's services and any little thing can distract them, forcing them to leave the site.
6. Drop-down menu for large projects
Despite the rapid development of web technologies, nothing better than a drop-down menu has been invented yet. Objectively, it is better to hide a huge number of section names, otherwise the entire first screen of your site will be occupied by a list of menu items. And this would look unaesthetic. In addition, too much choice confuses the user.
Take a look at this example of a drop-down menu used in the online store of men's cosmetics we developed:
Everything is structured and convenient. By clicking, for example, on hair lotions, the consumer finds himself on a page with products from this group. Thus, the path from the main page to a specific lotion will take only 3 clicks.