Mobile navigation is a crucial vehicle of the entire mobile app design since it is aimed at solving users’ usability problems. Therefore, creating good navigation is a must-do if you want to enhance the user experience and create a smooth overall customer journey. Due to the limitations on the mobile screens, the best mobile menus design usually use established patterns such as menus collapsed by default and hidden behind “hamburger” icons or “click on the left-side menu icon” and it slides aka side menus.
However, the architecture of the app can be designed with a different approach applying your own interaction pattern that will guide your users in the right direction. There are a lot of mobile navigation patterns to choose from. In this article, we are going to cover the navigation inspiration, highlight perks and situations when to use them and provide you with navigation inspiration.
Why is the navigation menu so crucial?
There is always a challenge for designers to provide users with smooth navigation accessibility and at the same time not to occupy too much space that will obscure the content and lead to frustration. So what should a good app menu do?
- Menu enhances the product content and information architecture. As a backbone of the mobile app, mobile navigation supports content in line with the information architecture, so that the architecture of the app is clearly structured and clearly ordered.
- Menu highlights the core functionality. Users have to be navigated in such a way in order to be not distracted by secondary functions. Therefore, a mobile app should provide users with a clear line between primary and secondary categories.
- Menu forms a smooth user experience. In order to achieve an orderly and coherent app structure providing a user with possible directions, their journey across the app should be streamlined. A comprehensive and simplified navigation system ensures a smooth path for users and, subsequently, a high conversion rate of the product.
Essential patterns of mobile navigation
Various navigation patterns are aimed at solving particular usability problems, and usage of a certain pattern depends on the app requirement. Let’s examine a few basic navigation patterns to design the best navigation menu and outline situations when to use each.
Hamburger menu
Despite the fact that usage of the hamburger menu is disputable among designers, it has already won the trust of millions of users worldwide. The hamburger mobile menus allow saving screen space and revealing the navigation only if a user takes an action. Yeah, at first glance it may seem a wonderful option for creating comprehensive navigation under a three-line icon allowing users to focus on the current page with sticky CTAs.
However, hamburger UI menus may be difficult to discover and are hard to reach on mobile. Due to its low discoverability users tend to omit essential and primary functions since they just do not think at all to open a hamburger menu. While for one user a “hamburger” may be a navigation drawer, for another one it may be confusing and be understood as a “three unknown lines” representing a list. Still, there is a way to improve hamburger menu usability. Let’s go through cases when it is worth using hamburgers for your app menu design and main tips on how to make them better.
When to use?
- If your app has more than five top-level categories and multiple levels of hierarchy, a hamburger menu will be a good option.
- If the content overwhelms, the hamburger icon can save space.
- If you want to drag the user’s attention to primary navigation such as “find a place”, “book a hotel”, “request a taxi”, “play a game”. Therefore, hamburgers are good options for a taxi, map, and gaming apps.
Tips
- Create a custom icon. Be creative using individual ideas but still remain recognizable.
- Use animation. Being one of the most popular design trends of 2021, animation allows for a captivating user experience.
- Prioritize the navigation options. By identifying your users’ needs, you will determine the core features that need to be displayed on the main screen and then adapt your navigation menu design accordingly.
- Use tabs for high-priority navigation options. With tabs, you release the user from loaded navigation options.
Full-screen navigation menu
As opposed to the hamburger menu pattern, which aims at saving more space for content, full-screen navigation is aimed at accommodating all the navigation elements on the home screen. You might ask: Why do designers offer such patterns for their clients when establishing navigation? The answer is to ensure cohesion and simplicity.
There are apps that are designed to provide users with categorized items that have a certain direction or knowledge-based apps where consumption of excessive amounts of information is worth categorizing.
When to use?
- If your app is designed in a particular niche with subcategories belonging to that niche, then full-screen navigation has to be your go-to option.
- When you want your users to be focused on content within individual sections, try out full-screen navigation.
- If you want your users to consume information in large amounts and in a coherent manner without overwhelming them with secondary functions, the full-screen menu can offer broad possibilities.
Tips
- Add a hamburger icon to hide secondary functions while keeping users’ focus on the primary functionality.
Bottom bar menu
The bottom bar menus are the type of navigation bar design and basically are sticky navigation options that are fixed on the bottom of the app providing the users with easy access to the main features. With visual cues such as icons, labels, etc. a user knows exactly where he is at a glance. Despite what page you are on currently, bottom bars are pinned, single-click marks. However, this pattern has its drawbacks due to the limited amount of navigation options.
Being located within a thumb zone, the bar menu allows reaching the navigation items once held in one hand. It is worth mentioning that 49 percent of users hold their phones in one hand which means that when designing an app it is recommended to take into consideration the position of a user’s thumb. Even when a user holds a phone in two hands, the bottom bar navigation will be a good option. Take the example of Instagram where all core functions are fixed at the bottom for easy navigation.
When to use?
- If your app consists of few top-level navigation options (ideally, up to five).
- When you want your users to easily switch between core unrelated categories.
- If the categories of the mobile app are at the same level of hierarchy.
Tips
- Define only the most frequently used destinations keeping not more than five items in the row.
- Avoid using scrollable and colorful icons.
- The icon has to effectively interact with a user; use the 5-second rule to identify if the icon is appropriate. It has to take a user up to 5 seconds to think about the action. Otherwise, you have to think of something more recognizable.
Card-based navigation
Thanks to a highly visual and customizable nature, UI cards are purposed to display top-level menu content. Combining different elements such as photo, text, coins, etc. card-based navigation allows coherent content organization for easy interaction. As opposed to standard navigation approaches, card-based navigation excludes excessive confusion of subcategories offering a user to be goal-focused.
One of the benefits of UI cards is that they are responsive and can be easily adapted to different screen sizes. One more interesting fact is that swiping is a common feature of card-based navigation, thus, it may turn a pleasant function for users since they permanently have to take actions which makes them highly interacted with the app. There is also gesture-based navigation that has similar functionality. For instance, the Tinder app where users swipe right and left the cards intuitively when they like or dislike someone.
Since people seek out information quickly, cards can be a good solution: they are easy for the eyes, have visual aesthetics, and have flexible layout formats. All these are valuable for users since great user experiences center around them.
When to use?
- If the app has sequential levels of the hierarchy and the user needs to move forward between the screens.
- If the content has to be personalized and customized.
Tips
- A card should include content related to one idea.
- The entire card has to be clickable and have a slight shadow to give a user the feeling of the real card.
- Additionally, it is a good idea to apply animation effects for better attraction.
Floating action button
Representing the primary function of the screen, the floating action button triggers the user to take the most appropriate action for this app. For instance, music players mostly possess this floating button so that users can easily navigate through music space. Among the most applied actions are share, favorite, create, add, start a process.
Being a natural cue to users, the floating button helps prioritize the most important action. A big plus is that this button occupies little space. However, even if the floating action button is attractive and colorful, it can distract the user from other actions.
When to use?
- If you want to prioritize a certain action for the user.
- If your app doesn’t consist of several levels of content.
Tips
- Do not apply the floating action button to all screens.
- Use floating buttons only for positive actions.
- Play with the forms of the button.
- Do not overwhelm users with excessive buttons on one screen.
Wrap up: best practices
Let’s summarize the above-mentioned patterns and tips to help you create the best mobile app navigation for your customers!
- Make the navigation intuitive to your target users. Your users do not like wandering across your app paths and hesitate about which button to click or what to do next. Therefore, profound research and testing will help identify your target audience and understand their behaviors. Afterward, you can elaborate upon the entire navigation system with all the details.
- Avoid clutter. Less is more; and often, minimalist approaches can justify better user experiences. But sometimes designers, when starting their elaboration on the mobile navigation, tend to saturate the UI layout in the way it overwhelms users. Hence, it is essential to analyze the distance between elements, maintain a precise hierarchy, leave empty spaces for visual balance.
- Adhere to the rule of a thumb. Without taking into account fingers and hand positioning of users may turn to be frustrated and collapse the entire user experience. With that said, you need to make buttons big enough so that users can easily take an action without double-clicking on them. Additionally, as we mentioned before, almost 50% of users prefer holding their phones in one hand, thus, do not neglect the option of the bottom bar menus.
- Keep mobile navigation short and explicit. There is a fact from Neil Patel states that giving users too many options may overwhelm them leading to a sales decline. Yeah, this all relates to mobile navigation that is recommended to be limited up to five icons on the top level. If your app is designed with multi-level navigation, try to keep it simple as possible. But if there is a need to add more than one sublevel and more items, implement vertically oriented navigation.
- Add a search as a part of your navigation. The search box may be a rescue sign for some users providing them with a possibility of extensive navigation. Sometimes designers underestimate the power of a search icon that has to be an integral part of the navigation menu.
Final word
Hamburger menu or bottom bar navigation? Full-size screen navigation or maybe floating action buttons? We have outlined the basic navigation options available for your mobile menu design. Though there are many more alternatives offering innovative approaches toward mobile navigation design patterns. Leave a comment if you’d like to read more about best practices and new solutions to mobile navigation.
Aligning with new trends our professionals are always testing new ways to deliver product ideas to customers in a more customizable and attractive manner and at the same time remain conservative and listen to users’ needs. Anyway, in order to achieve a tangible result, your mobile app has to be tested, tested, and once again tested.
Contact us and our designers will help you pick up the best pattern for your mobile app navigation.