Navigation Design Inspirations for Websites In 2017

Graphics Design | Web Design

The navigation design system of a website is crucial at UX and usability point of views. When a user lands on your website page, she wants to know about the website purpose. Once, she assured herself that, the website is befitting in her criteria to get the desired information/products/services, she look at the ways to find the expected web page or the product page. In this journey, she needs an effective navigation system in place to bring at her target. Of course, the search feature is there, but it is only for tech-savvy users or power users, and sometimes visitors avoid to rely on it. Therefore, the main menu at first instance grabs the attention of the visitors and capable of pushing visitors ahead in their journey. Apart from the main menu, there are other navigation schemes, which are trendy and innovative so let’s check those schemes.

Full-Screen Navigation Design Scheme:

In this scheme, navigation itself becomes design – Olcese is the best example of it.

Horizontal Top & Bottom Navigation Design Scheme:

Top navigation is a common convention on the web, but some web designers experimenting with the bottom by making a little more oversized navigation menu.

Vertical Navigation Design Scheme:

Vertical navigation schemes are found more prevalent in the market. Particularly it has seen in single page layout websites and responsive web design. However, carefully designed multipage websites with vertical menu bar can work great. In responsive web design, vertical navigation scheme is befitting well and offers great user experiences through various options like off-canvas navigation schemes. Some best examples are:

• Single-page navigation – Jorge Rigabert
• Multi-Page Navigation – Mcdonalds
• Three Lined Drawer Navigation – 1Bite2Go
• Compact Navigation – The Offshore Partners
• Zero Vertical Scroll Navigation – Mammoth

No Navigation Design Scheme:

Many mini sites like for coming soon, a preview of a product, or introductory single page websites do not require navigation due to their unique nature. For e.g. Quincy Requin & Associates

Slide-out/off-canvas Navigation Design Scheme:

It is an impressive way to provide navigation scheme for mobile-friendly websites with the responsive design when screen real estate always in question. Ex: Tinderflint

Mega Menu Navigation Design Scheme:

Some giant portals like Amazon have mega menu navigation schemes. Similarly, big retailers need to accommodate numerous products within a number of various categories. Thus, mega navigation scheme is appropriate for them.

Animated Navigation Design Scheme:

Despite the death of Flash, animations on the websites are alive and used in different ways to make web interactions alive, dynamic, and responsive. There are some rooms for animations in designing navigation schemes such as giving hover effects where clickable or tapping areas are expanding slightly over the action. Designing a bouncing arrow for leading users through design elements is another way to give a sweet surprise to the website visitors on big screens or tiny screens. Basile Tournier is one of the suitable examples for such navigation schemes.  

Card-style Navigation Design Scheme:

We know Pinterest is using cards in web design for everything including navigation scheme. It uses a perpetual deck of cards and links to make deep navigation possible. Cards with relevant images or illustrations can help all levels of website visitors to figure out the purpose easily. Google Material Design prefers card design and also issued guidelines for it.  

Conclusion:

After studying various navigational schemes contemporarily prevailing on the web, we can get some unique inspirations to design our next challenging project. Navigation design is always contextual and needs custom approaches to address bespoke requirements of each project in different ways. It demands expertise, experiences, and more creativity to come out with desired navigation schemes and user experiences. What you need is a team of web designers, which has all required qualities and Addon Solutions has made such talents available for you.