Five Things About ... Mega Menus (Day 1)

Mega menus have been around for years, but their popularity really took off in March 2008 when in Jakob Nielsen, usability's own champion against the forces of bad design, declared that mega menus "tested well enough that [he] want to encourage its wider use." Ever since, large web sites have implemented some stunning examples of the design element. And following closely behind, there have been several different sites that do a great job of rounding up some of the best examples on the web. So go there if you want to see what can be done with mega menus. Here, we're going to focus on the specifics of how and why to bring this design element into your web site.

Day 1: Determine Whether It's Useful

Planning before implementation -- it's such an important but often over-looked concept. In this case, you have to determine whether or not you even need a mega menu. One of my biggest pet peeves is designers who blindly follow current trends and add design elements simply because they're popular. Good design comes from understanding the reasons behind these elements and applying them when and where appropriate.

In the case of mega menus, the guiding principle is one of usability. Mega menus must:

1. Provide visually intuitive ways to display organized content.
   
2. Make it easier and faster for users to find what they need.

The mega menu allows users to see an organized sub-set of options immediately and in such a way as to invite comparison. Visual elements like changes in font sizes, colors, or indentations allows users to more quickly understand the available categories and groupings. While content should exist within a strict information architecture hierarchy, not every user will think about information in the same way; mega menus can allow alternate methods of content grouping to address some of those differences. And all of this helps users make faster decisions about where to find their content.

So before thinking about adding it to your web site, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does my web site have a large number of unique pages (> 50) of content?
2. Is the primary navigation composed of a large number of categories (> 7)?
   
3. Is the site's information architecture complex enough that my users are unable to find relevant content?
4. Do I have content that is important to the site but buried deeply in the hierarchy?
5. Is my search feature returning too many results?

The purpose of these questions is to determine whether or not you have sufficient reason for adopting mega menus. Smaller web sites have no need; there simply isn't enough content on them to justify the potential drawbacks of adopting mega menus. (We'll address mega menu drawbacks later in the week.) Web sites with only a few pages can best be served by better navigation elements (a traditional drop down off of the primary navigation), an extended footer, or a site map. The same holds true for shallow web sites. Users can simply click the primary links, and if those landing pages are designed well enough, they'll quickly get a useful sense for whether they want to continue.

Even large web sites may not need to use mega menus. Web sites where users should navigate a structured hierarchy in order to find their content wouldn't find a significant benefit with sophisticated mega menus. Strangely enough, mega menus aren't necessarily useful when there are too many options. When all of these many, many items are equal, what would you highlight, and what would it mean to those items that you didn't highlight? Examples of both concepts can be seen at Amazon or eBay.

So, if you answer yes to at least three of these questions, then it's safe to consider using mega menus on your web site. In the end, all web design is about usability; web sites that are not usable are not useful and serve no purpose.

Join us again tomorrow as we figure out where to go next.