There is a lot of debate in the world of web development about whether using the “hamburger menu” in responsive design is beneficial or inhibitive for the functionality of a site.
You’ve almost certainly seen the menu button before — three stacked, horizontal lines, typically located on the top right or left corner of a website, which allow people to click through and see a menu of the pages on the site.
The biggest benefit is that it significantly cleans up the home page of a website, especially on mobile devices, where there’s already a very limited amount of space to work with. This is particularly important for websites that have a large number of pages. You need to be smart about your menu functionality, and having a crisp appearance for your website is very important.
The biggest drawback, however, is that the menu can hide a lot of important information. If you are trying to get people to flock to certain pages, you need the links to those pages to be in prominent, obvious places. Hamburger menus can hide those links and damage your click-through and conversion rates as a result.
If you are going to use a hamburger menu in your responsive design, there are some tips you can follow to make sure you avoid damaging your digital marketing:
- Be smart about what you put into the “hamburger menu.”In general, you don’t want any links that lead to sales to be obscured in the menu. Instead, use it to stash links for social media pages, contact forms, searches, subscriptions and other such pages. You can make the decision about what goes in the menu easier by prioritizing all of your pages and keeping high-priority pages out of the menu.
- Make sure you have some focus on the menu.There are several ways you can draw attention to a hamburger menu. There could be a fancy animation, striking color or other optical trick — just make sure people can easily see it and know what it is.
- Make it easy to use.Functionality is extremely important in all aspects of a website, but it’s worth reiterating for the hamburger menu. If you are going to hide certain pages of your website in the menu, you need to make sure the menu is fast and easy to use.
For more tips about responsive design, contact the team at IDMI.Net today.