Questions about Top Menu

Design & UX
1

I have a new client, and lots of diverse information about their business, and I’m trying to figure out how to present everything in the best way.

Not being a designer, I was going to use a simple horizontal Top Menu.

But there is so much information about the business and its services that I’m not sure how to fit everything in the Top Menu.

This leads me to a few questions…

1.) How many choices can you reasonably put in a simple, horizontal Top Menu?

(And please don’t say, “As many that fit!”)

2.) Is it evil to use drop-down menus in combination with a horizontal Top Menu?

For example, there could be a Menu Item called “About Us” and when the user clicks on that, they would get a drop-down menu with: Company History, Management Team, Our Values, etc

BTW, anything I create would just use HTML/CSS for the menus - including any drop-downs.

Thanks.

2

1.) How many choices can you reasonably put in a simple, horizontal Top Menu?

Well yes you can have as many as you want! Saying that too much choice can be confusing for many people so the less the better. For that reason try to keep to a minimum that still allows visitors to carry out their key tasks, any non essential links (like the About section) could be added to the page footer so they’re still discoverable.

2.) Is it evil to use drop-down menus in combination with a horizontal Top Menu?

No, but factor in how this would work on small screens.

1 Like
3

For my own site the top menu is the main menu and is just for the main areas of the site, each area has got it’s own vertical menu. Links like “About Us”, “Contact Us” should really be in the footer. You don’t want to many options clogging up your site’s main menu and avoid doing using javascript for a menu as it will be broke for anyone who has got javascript disbaled

4

I was thinking of creating maybe 5-6 “areas” for the website - each represented by a tab. (Sounds like what you are saying.)

Why should “About Us” be relegated to the footer, though?

I am trying to help this new client build name-recognition and a good reputation, so it seems to me that it should be in the Main Menu.

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