My spiel on menu navigation

Oct 14 2007

I’ve raised more than one client’s eyebrow in my time when I’ve told them that I don’t recommend “drop-down” menu navigation on web sites.

Why?

Here’s my spiel. If the primary purpose of a web site is marketing, the quality and success of your site as a marketing tool is going to be defined by your ability to tell your visitors a good story. You generally want people to see information or types of information in a specific order and lead them to a specific call to action like buy or call or email. Menu navigation severely impairs your ability to do that. When you expose the entire structure of the site from the home page you invite people to jump around. They can get lost, they can get confused and your story never gets told properly.

With a standard navigation scheme, you can lead people to the information they want. With a menu scheme, visitors are left to find it on their own. With a standard navigation scheme, visitors choose from a handful of links to click on. With a menu scheme, they can easy be overwhelmed by choices and intimidated by a site that looks much bigger than it is.

It’s also important to note that contrary to the conventional wisdom that became popular in the late 90’s, big sites are not necessarily better sites. If a good story can be told in 5 pages, what is the benefit of stretching it into 10? It comes from a “selfish” idea that a company’s web site will be somehow more significant or relevant the larger it is. That also combines unhappily with the financial interests of designers/developers/agencies who will obviously charge more to create additional pages. Consider how much simpler your site would be to manage at 5 pages. Consider how much more respectful it would be to your audience who can navigate your site in half the clicks and how much more effective your message would be if it were twice as accessible. There will be another post on this topic soon…

But my final argument against menu navigation is that a lot of people don’t like using it. It’s too easy to “miss” with your mouse and lose the menu. It’s not the most user-friendly way to navigate.

So, for most sites, I strongly recommend against using the menu navigation. You’ll find that you force yourself to build a MUCH stronger and well organized site without leaning on your menu structure as a crutch. Your visitors will thank you.