Sticky navigation is a web design trend that’s all about convenience and accessibility.
Do you ever get annoyed with scrolling to the top of the website to get back to the menu?
With sticky navigation you won’t have to. A sticky navigation menu follows you wherever you go on the page.
What Is It?
You might not have noticed websites with sticky navigation but you most likely have seen one. A sticky navigation is a menu that “sticks” around no matter where you go on the page. It follows you as you scroll down the page.
Website viewers like sticky navigation because it’s easy to navigate the website and find pages according to WebUnlimited. Usually people have to keep scrolling to the top of the page in order to get back to the menu. This can be annoying especially with lengthy websites. Traditionally, menus are on the left side column of a website but with sticky navigation, the menu is the front and center piece.
Why Use it?
Designing an effective navigation on your website is critical. With sticky navigation, users spend less time clicking and finding tabs. You don’t have to scroll back to the top of the site to get to the menu bar. It’s always visible no matter how far you scroll. This is a useful tool if your website holds many web pages. Sticky navigation keeps pages organized and easy to spot. In an experiment conducted by SmashingMagazine, 100% of the participants indicated that the website with the sticky navigation was easier or faster to use.
Disadvantages
Sticky navigation is not 100% responsive. There are compatibility issues with some mobile devices because of the differences in size.
A minor disadvantage is some people don’t like a menu floating around, sticking with them wherever they are on the site.
Another issue is sticky navigation takes up a lot of space on your website, leaving less area for content. However, preferences depend on whether you want as much content space as you can get or if you like clutter-free, clean slate websites. On the plus side one of the biggest web trends now is a clean simple website.
Contact NuZoo Media for more information on sticky navigation!