How to optimize your e-commerce navigation menu on Shopify?

Whether you've opted for classic navigation, a megamenu, a panel, a bottom bar... your e-commerce site's navigation menu is not only one of the first elements your customer sees, but also the entry point to your site's most important pages, ensuring good conversion or not.

Review of best practices for building a fluid navigation experience using your menu: follow the guide!

1. Form at the service of content

It is necessary to design your navigation menu according to the rest of your site, the content and products it hosts, and your customers' browsing habits. Its use must be simple, even familiar for your regular customers, who should find your brand's fonts, colors, visuals, etc. there. These graphic elements must be optimized to ensure content readability for everyone. So, no overly convoluted fonts and no tone-on-tone!

Mobile vs. desktop: what about variations and responsiveness? It is clear in 2023 that a good navigation menu must be responsive and adapted to the viewing device. While adaptations are sometimes necessary to accommodate site content (e.g., megamenu on desktop VS side panel on mobile), it is important to maintain a similar tree structure and graphic consistency. Your customers will thank you when they return to your site on a new device and find their way around!

The layout of content should be designed to facilitate understanding of the linking structure:

• If possible, favor few entries in the first levels, and 5 to 7 maximum for subsequent levels (beyond that, users are often lost)
• Remember to indicate what sells first (starting with your flagship products), then content pages that convert less. More utilitarian links (legal pages in particular) will find their place in the footer.
• Vertical layout is suitable for long lists and horizontal for a smaller number of entry points. Playing with both layouts between different levels can be a useful approach in some cases.

2. Everything in its place

Remember that the navigation menu is the gateway to your entire catalog: it would be a shame if some customers missed out on their dream product because it was poorly indicated! To avoid this, it is necessary to structure your entire catalog upstream into clear and organized collections.

For example, you can identify "dimensions" within which to build your product collections: by product categories (coats and jackets, pants and jeans, etc.), by gender (men, women), by brand, by solution (anti-stress, slimming, etc.), by event (sales, Christmas, etc.). These different dimensions must be clear throughout the navigation. Tip: don't hesitate to use Shopify product tags to create automatic collections.

The labels of these different entry points must be understandable for a customer making their first visit to the site. If the customer doesn't understand what it is, they are unlikely to click on it first. If necessary, consider categorizing these "exotic labels" under clearer names (an originally named collection under a "collections" header, for example).

Finally, it's not just about collections and products, but also about thinking about the other site pages that make sense in your menu: blog, brand presentation page, contact form, store locator...

3. The cherry on the cake

Once you have built the content to display in your navigation menu and optimized its structure, you can then think about adding small "extras" that will create visual touchpoints to win over your site visitors:

• Header / menu animations on scroll down the page (useful for maintaining sticky navigation without cluttering too much screen space)
• Custom behaviors on hover of menu elements
• An "accentuated" style for more event-driven menu entries (different color, font...), such as for sales or Valentine's Day, for example. You can also (if in line with your brand's DNA) use icons or emojis in the titles!
• Visuals to present main categories

Questions? Needs? Don't hesitate to contact us to discuss!