You will notice that menus and navigation are shrinking for a while because something is happening in your website design. Minimal navigation elements and style are gaining too much popularity along with the hamburger menu icon. Hamburger is the menu icon that helps you to design a website that look and feel very simple.
You will find most of the website developers make a use of Hamburger design. Minimalist design approach is the latest trend in website design that is followed by most of the designers.
Minimalist design approach makes user to interface with your website in ease. So in this post we will study about the main pros and cons of minimal navigation in website design.
At the end of this post you will get a clear idea that why you should always go with minimal navigation. So let’s start
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What do you mean by Minimal Navigation in Design?
Minimal navigation web design is an approach that deletes all the unnecessary factors and elements to ensure that website has minimal design that looks and feels good. For example tabs, contents and menus are considered to unwanted elements hence they get removed. Whereas other important elements are highlighted and preserved.
The main focus is that you need to remove as much as elements that are useless including popup, tabs, drop-down menus and more.
Keeping thing simple on website is the main motto of minimal navigation design approach so that no user will face any conflict while searching, clicking or browsing your website. smooth searching and browsing experience will also give positive outcome. Thus now a day’s across the world, it has become a trend to use minimal navigation website method. There are several methods for minimal navigation style but the most famous is hamburger icon.
Hamburger icon is featured with three black links in the top corner of graphical user interface. It is a part of navigation that helps you to cover all other menu items in a single hamburger icon. Hamburger icons are very popular so that each and every user can easily identify which is the hamburger design. This hamburger design is placed either at the left/right or middle that make user to easy navigate.
Only this is the use of hamburger design, else this design is not used at all. Furthermore there are much more factors in minimal navigation design that can be considered. Thus this design approach can lead you to success with number of opportunity and concerns.
But like other design, minimal navigation design approach has also some pros and cons of minimal navigation that need to be consider.
Advantages of Minimal Navigation
You will find that there will be so many situations where simple navigation will work perfectly.
Small navigation elements is become rule
Little navigation elements are become essential for mobile devices. Most of the customers use mobile phones thus the mobile website should consist of minimal menu items that will be shrinked in hamburger style icon.
Once the user knows about the working style of hamburger style icon you do not need to worry about design. Because navigation is very essential and common element on small devices it arises a question whether this icon will fit to other desktop screen or not.
Users know about everything
Minimal navigation styles are very effective because with simple design style users know what they need to perform to navigate. But you need to remember one thing that minimal design does not means zero navigation. It means minimum navigation.
Some minimal design approach shows that how it can be effective way to get more users attracted. And the hamburger is one of them that can generate effective results. This design makes your customer to navigate to their desired page very easily thus they will have an awesome journey.
Slide out and pop out can give you a chance to add more specific information
The fact about minimal navigation is that you can style your hamburger in the style you want you get the chance to add more relevant information and context where it is needed.
You can check unique style designed with minimal navigation by visiting the official website of Quadangles. When you click on hamburger you will see links to some content, included with social media buttons and pop-out menus.
Minimal navigation opens up the chances for designing
Instead of adding white menu bar on the top of screen along with the small text and button you will get the opportunity to add canvas design that will be clean and clear to navigate.
This type of design will be easy to read and navigate.
Focus on some other “entry points”
Minimal navigation will give you a chance on focus on some other design factors such as call to action button, button elements or a card elements that will make user to read content from one to another or a scheme that will drive user from one page to another page.
While considering the plan if you start designing you website so it can help you to rebuild conversion or keep focus on other factor to make interaction between users and website. Thus minimal navigation plan can benefit you to achieve your goal.
Disadvantages of minimal navigation design
Minimal navigation design approach will not work for every type of business website. Select a minimal navigation style depends on the content and the individual preferences. Some reasons to not consider minimal navigation are mentioned below
Some user will find this design so simple
Young generation people do not love simple website they look for animated design and structure. So it is important to check your audiences and they prefer simple or animated design structure.
Thus sometime, the minimal design style can lower you users. To keep a track on navigation elements are helpful or not you must check the analytics that how many customers are using such elements to navigate plus check whether they are using those elements.
Non-prioritized the content
With minimal navigation one can non-prioritized the content in different methods. Most of the customer thinks that navigation factors are the most essential content and a page of a website design.
But what if your website does not have content or a page to navigate? This can be a major problem as user will not able to find the expected content. Minimal navigation should have some design that will be effective and attractive so that user find it useful.
Lower in user engagement
Instead of hamburger icon, button style design is a good option.
Hamburger icon can be useful for saving your space by comprising menus into a single hamburger icon but it is a major reason for lower engagement. Most clickable design is considered to buttons because not all users will know about hamburger design. So it is better to keep a track on every function. Check where your design is clickable.
Potential Negative SEO Impact
Less number of content in the website can result in less possibilities of getting your website index by search engines. Hence engines and robots will not find sufficient content and will not able to understand the motto of your business. And this can result badly in search engine optimization that will generate minimum leads.
If user is bouncing quickly the search engine will give your website with a poor ranking because they unable to find the approx content. So be aware of it.
Lost in busy designs
Your website can look ineffective because of absence of new design. It would be good if you have used minimal design approach and your website is getting crawled by Google else you might face so many challenges.
For this your menu bar should be sticky along with the dark or white box. It does not matter whether your menu bar has a small number of choices it is important to just add and make it clickable.
Conclusion:
Content is the most important factor that makes user to navigate from one to content. For eCommerce based website it is important to have list of menus with inner pages. Some important elements are listed above that is important to generate good number of revenue. Hence pros and cons of minimal navigation are also mentioned.
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