Mega drop-down menus work!
It’s news to us and in a lot of ways it makes a lot of sense. Where simple, single column menus can confuse and usually just replicate what’s going on in the main page, mega menus give the users a fast overview of not just core navigation, but contextual offers and links.
Tesco is a good example of a simple utilization of this, whilst Jacob Neilsen’s blog on Useit.com shows a range of more exciting (can navigation be exciting?) uses of this new approach to drop down navigation.
Drop downs are bad
Typically we would not recommend them and have spent a lot of time reviewing, researching and trying to get them to work for clients who insist on them.
The obvious choice is the make sure the main navigation elements are represented in the main page as this is where the user typically looks and clicks first.
But for many clients, there are too many choices and too many priorities that need to be highlighted and this new approach does allow a much broader view of what’s on offer.
We are currently testing more versions of this approach and looking at how it can be better used by some of our clients, if you want to know more or see our research, please get in touch.
What’s also nice is that you can start to offer contextual navigation and target content within the panel based on behavioural targeting; search term used to get to the site, previous behaviour, currnet customer, etc.
information architecture, interface design, usability design