Navigation & The Unknown Facts Of Sticky Menu
The elements of navigation
The navigation bar of a website is similar to a level directory in a library. For example, if there is no menu bar you will be disoriented virtually and will not know how to find your destination. So, navigation of web design plays a important role in creating convenience for users and their returns to the website.
However, to create a effective navigation, besides the menu bar, other elements of navigation is also very important. A designer will need to notice to words, symbols, pictograms and icons. With your knowledge about the linguist, you can analyze the meaning of sentences, words and letters in different context; especially; terms of morphology, syntax and phonology, or raise the questions why words are used. Furthermore, symbols, pictograms and icons are useful elements to enhance the effectiveness of textual expressions. You should have a set of icons and labels and testing different interaction for one specific icon. Make sure that, with the appropriate icons, website users will find things they need quickly, which means that you need to pay attention to the perception of website users.
For example, let’s think about this question: Do you see the floppy disk exist in this 21st century? Yet, how anyone can recognize that it is the symbol of file saving in Words? If you use the floppy disk icon for Next button, what can happen? Make sure that you don’t colorize the word “green” in red. Don’t make users think.
Another thing that will bring effective navigation to users is type of menu you select. From my standpoints, I make suggestion to use sticky menus. You want to why we should use it, please see the below section.
Sticky menus
Actually, the recent trend that designers love a lot in designing main menu is the use of sticky navigation which allows the navigation of a website to remain in the same position as the user scrolls up and down the screen. Therefore, the user can quickly access the navigation no matter where they are in the site.
Sticky Navigation is generally useful despite this, it is not always easy to use or access. And sometimes it can be extremely annoying. With my experiences, I see that sticky menus has both pros and cons.
Pros
Great usability
The advantages of sticky navigation bars is evident. They make navigation time of users far shorter. Because when the user scrolls down the page navigation bar will not disappear, users don’t have to scroll back to the top of the website to access the navigation menu. It’s proved that the sticky menu has allowed users to search quickly and easily.
Have you known about the optimal speed of fixed navigation? So amazing that a recent usability study suggests that fixed navigation bars can reduce browsing time by up to 22% (by Hyrum Denney). If only stop at this figure, you will see that it is meaningless, but 22% will suddenly becomes a mass of time when you consider the average internet using time daily on social networking.
Quick and easy flow through a website is extremely important. It not only makes users comfortable when using but also never need to worry about confusion or disappearance of navigation. You can see obviously at the form of everyone’s favorite social media: Facebook and Twitter. That is also a form of sticky menu. Coming here, make sure that you also imagine convenience and efficiency of the fixed navigation bars.
(retrieved from Hyrum Denney, Smashing Magazine).
According to the survey, to choose between two interfaces, one with fixed navigation bars and one without, 34 out of 40 users preferred the latter. Only 6 users replied that they had no preference. Actually, sticky navigation works to great effect. The fact that the trend is becoming more and more popular, and I believe that you will have a strong support to sticky navigation.
However, with my experiences sticky menus is not totally useful. They still have some disadvantages.
Cons
Besides the great benefits of the sticky menus, some users, sometimes, still find it distracting; especially; when a website has a clear website structure, or a lack of content to move through, a fixed navigation bar can often be seen as the unecessary.
Beyond simple space constraints, a fixed navigation can be made the problem with mobile format though the problem isn’t universal. Another problemn is that a complicated design can also increase page load times, which is always a major cause of concern.
In conclusion, regards from 2 minor cons listed above, the benefits of sticky menu is undeniable, it’s just the matter of using it smartly. So, I still make a suggestion that you should use the sticky navigation because it not only creates conveniences for users but also does it increase effectiveness of interaction between website users and website.
Some fantastic examples of navigation menu in Web Design
Pi – Responsive Multipurpose Theme
Leave A Comment