573 ‘Drop-Down Menu’ Design Examples
Also referred to as: Mega Drop-Down, Drop-Down Navigation
What’s this? Here you’ll find 573 “Drop-Down Menu” full-page screenshots annotated with research-based UX insights, sourced from Baymard’s UX benchmark of 123 e-commerce sites. (Note: this is less than 1% of the full research catalog.)
Having a user-friendly interface for the main navigation drop-down menu is as important as having a solid underlying category taxonomy, as what the user sees and interacts with largely determines if they will be able to navigate the site intuitively or are halted every time they try to browse the site’s categories. Hover-based drop-down menus (aka “mega menus”) are currently found at 88% of all top US e-commerce sites — yet our testing shows that they require the utmost attention to interaction details if they are to perform well for users.
More ‘Drop-Down Menu’ Insights
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During our testing, what often at first seemed like minor navigation design details would end up severely misleading the test subjects. This led to fundamental misconceptions about the site’s hierarchy, selection of overly narrow scopes, inability to traverse back up to broader categories, etc.
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Learn More: Besides exploring the 573 “Drop-Down Menu” design examples below, you may also want to read our related articles on “Highlight the User’s Current Scope in the Main Navigation (66% of Sites Don’t)” and “E-Commerce Usability: The Main Navigation Should Display Product Categories (18% Don’t)”.
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Get Full Access: To see all of Baymard’s homepage and category navigation research findings you’ll need Baymard Premium access. (Premium also provides you full access to 78,000+ hours of UX research findings, 750+ e-commerce UX guidelines, and 77,800+ UX performance scores.)
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