Make Your Website Easy To Navigate In 2024 With These Website Navigation Trends.
How much time would you spend on a website that gives you no clue about how to find what you want? Maybe 5 seconds or less. That happens when a website is not structured well and all the essential portions are either inadequately placed or are missed, altogether.
So, what constitutes a user-friendly web navigation design? The answer may be different for everyone, as it totally depends on your unique audience and the purpose of your website. However, in this posts we have lined up some navigation trends you can draw inspiration from and come up with new ways to entice and engage your targeted audience.
Trends to Consider For Your Website Navigation
Websites are created every day, each with a specific layout and architecture. Here are 5 of the top web navigation trends that developers and web architects came up with at the end on 2016 and are predicted to stay in 2024.
1. Simplified Navigation
Designers are embracing minimalistic approach. People today don’t want to cram up visuals. Streamlining and decreasing the number of links in your navigation section can improve the user experience and highlight the essential links. Rather than jam-packing your navigation with all the links, you can leave the less important links for the footer of your website, if possible. This trend has brought less drop down menus to make the websites look simpler, meanwhile, there are also mega-menus that are being widely used on larger websites and online stores.
Our opinion:
Fewer elements in navigation will be really helpful, as it can allow the web architects to bring important pages in the spotlight. And since I use keyboard navigation that makes it extremely difficult for me to browse w website with mega-menus, it would prefer simple navigation on mega menus, unless it is an e-commerce website.
2. Fixed Navigation
Fixed navigation style keeps your elements in place while your web visitors scroll across the web page. You can find this trend on parallax websites or the news related website, especially where there is an enormous amount of content to scroll through, as this style provides an easy way to browse the website. Besides, fixed navigation bars reduce the web browsing time by 22% approx.
Our opinion:
If you have a long website then you should go for fixed navigation bar. Scrolling websites with fixed navigation bars make up a very effective combo when you have much content to scroll through. For a unique example of this combo, you can check the website of the Singapore Youth Choir.
3. Merge Mobile and Desktop Layout
Google and Google users (everyone) loves responsive websites, but for web designers, responsive websites bring a handful of navigation challenges. Navigation challenges can be tackled easily if you use off-canvas navigation for your desktop layout along with the mobile design. It usually displays a menu icon that expands to show more navigational elements.
Our opinion:
This navigation style may give your website layout a cleaner look, but it’s not much helpful when it comes to hurried users. Some visitors are too busy to understand how your site’s navigation works, so it is essential to consider your audience before making your mind about choosing this navigation style.
4. Unusual Navigation
This is one of the best trends we have seen in 2016 and is growing in 2024. You can use the unusual navigation patterns to unleash an out-of-box approach towards navigation style that is not too ubiquitous on the World Wide Web. Again, you have to consider your targeted audience before choosing this abstract navigation style.
Our opinion:
If your audience is a fan of some extra creative navigation, you can use this type of navigation strategy. Beware that this is a very good option for most of the businesses. If you think your audience will like such website, then go for it.
It takes me some time to understand how SLG navigates, but once I figured it out I am no less than impress, so it can be really complicated to understand for your targeted audience unless you want to just impress them.
5. Unique Hover Effects
The hover effect takes your web navigation to the next level. It’s one of the widely used effects on the websites with the intention of enhancing the user experience. Web developers are trying new ways of using this effect and are constantly introducing innovation to the table.
Our opinion:
Hovering effects are quite helpful in increasing the interactivity of the website. The more your visitors will interact the more time they will spend on your website.
So these were some of the latest web navigation trends that are attracting many eyes. Whether you follow any of these or come up with your own trend, make sure that it is aligned with the nature of your targeted audience. Best of luck!
