The Beauty of Vertical Navigation Designs

Navigation Menus are one of the most important elements in a website as they are usually the first thing visitors connect to, using them users can go from page to page exploring the website. These menus form a common link for users to ‘walk around the site' using the navigation menu as a ‘map'.

Due to their pivotal role in a website designers, information architects, usability researchers and user experience specialists devote so much effort and resources into developing aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly navigation systems.

Along with functionality and visual appeal the placement of the navigation menu has to be kept in mind. To instantly attract the visitor's eye they need to be placed in the most visible location of the homepage as well as any other page.

Website navigation menus have to predominant styles vertical and horizontal. The horizontal menu present items side by side, whereas Vertical navigation menus stack items on top of each other.

Bothe styles have their pros but here we will focus on the advantages and designing scope of the vertical style navigation menu

Advantages of Vertical Navigation Menus

• Vertical Navigation Menus are simple and clean in looks yet robust in functionality and interaction.
• Vertical Navigation style allow for highly compact and modular menus that appear distinct from the rest of the layout.
• A distinct advantage of vertical navigation menu is that it shows hierarchy and allows you to group menu items without resorting to drop-down menus.
• Vertical Navigation style is able to accommodate more menu items.
• Big font sizes with different font types can be used as there is more vertical space to work with in the vertical navigation menu.
• Images or animations can also be used due to the vertical space available in the vertical navigation menu.