One of the things that will determine if a user sticks around or immediately decides to leave your site is how cluttered the site is. If it looks difficult to use, that will scare off most visitors. We’re going to look at how expandable menus can keep your site uncluttered, and also how you can keep your menu from becoming overly complicated.
How Expandable Menus Work
The classic example is a drop down menu. When the user hovers over a menu item (or clicks depending on how your menu is set up), a secondary menu drops down revealing more options. This is a great way to categorize your pages. For example, the services menu may reveal a number of different services pages.
Keep in mind that where you place additional pages in the drop down menu will have to make sense. If people do not find what they are looking for on their first try, there may not be a second attempt. The person may simply find an easier to use site from among your many competitors. So how can you keep menu use to a minimum and keep things from being too complicated?
How to Keep Your Menu Size Down
One great way to keep the number of pages in your menu down is to focus on landing pages. Landing pages are meant to be directly found on search engines or perhaps to be linked to via social media or email marketing campaigns. You can’t get to the page through the website menu. It just draws in customers and provides lead generation. That means the landing page will need to provide a contact form or link to your contact page directly.
Your blog adds site content without increasing menu size because everything is actually on the blog page. On the blog page, you can use tags and categories to make it easy for users to find topics that appeal to their needs. People are willing to search a few seconds longer on a blog, especially once they have enjoyed some of the content already.
Additionally, you can link to other pages of site content via internal links. These boost your search ranking and allow people to find relevant content by clicking links in your site content rather than navigating a menu. Using icons along with titles and brief descriptions lets users learn more about the page before they click the link.
In the end, a good menu design will help you to provide customers with an easy to use site that improves the user’s experience.