11 Ways to Design the Perfect Site Navigation

11 Ways to Design the Perfect Site Navigation

Header navigation menus can often be overlooked when it comes to inventive and creative web design. But as the primary way users explore an... 12:24 PM

Header navigation menus can often be overlooked when it comes to inventive and creative web design. But as the primary way users explore and interact with your website, investing in engaging header navigation means site visitors spend more time on your site and end up seeing much more than just your landing page. There’s no point having brilliant web design on your inner pages if your header doesn’t make it easy (and fun) to click through to it.

So we’ve put together a roundup of websites which have made the most of their navigation menus with beautiful, sleek, and innovative design. Take a look below and get inspired!

1. SISTRIX

Sistrix is the German company behind popular SEO software package Sistrix Toolbox. As such, their website (including their popular SEO news blog) gets regular traffic from digital experts. When that’s your target market, there isn’t much room for sloppiness when it comes to web design.

Keeping things sleek and stylish, the Sistrix navigation menu is comprised of four simple drop down menus: Toolbox, Blog, Resources and Support. Hovering over each header reveals a list of relevant links, each represented by a simple icon. This is a particularly smart idea when your website has as many pages as Sistrix’s has.

Just showing a block of text can be overwhelming when trying to navigate through a big website, but these well-designed icons quickly direct the visitor to where they need to go. Looking for help with mobile SEO? A simple smartphone icon draws the eye and gets you there much quicker. Streamlining the user experience for site visitors is one of the main functions of a good navigation header, and this is something the Sistrix site nails.

2. REISS 

When you’re a fashion brand, it’s smart to show off your latest designs as much as possible. While many drop-down navigation menus are purely text-based, UK fashion brand Reiss highlights their New Arrivals catalogue using images in the drop-downs for womenswear and menswear, two of their core product categories. It helps that they’ve invested in high-quality photography—with pictures that look this great, why not incorporate them as a key part of the navigation experience?

3. VIBRAINS

Vibrains is a portfolio for Emiliano Borzelli, a front end developer. When it comes to the site, it’s truly out of this world. Picking a clear design motif like ‘space’ gives a cohesive look to the whole site. Everything from the logo design to the key info icons utilise space imagery. A simply animated banner makes browsing the site feel like floating in outer space, but the absolute standout design feature is a fully animated animation of the solar system when you jump into the process section. 

With to-scale representations of our neighboring planets, it evokes the childlike fascination people have with space to keep visitors engaged with navigating through the site. If you’re as obsessed with this animation as we are, you’ll be glad to hear we tracked down the open source code for it on CodePen here!

4. WEECOM 

Brazil-based digital agency Weecom utilise a hamburger-menu button to keep their homepage looking sleek and minimalist, with navigation options only popping up as you hover over the icon. It’s a pretty standard approach to navigation headers, but what we love about Weecom’s site is how scrolling down the page causes the hamburger icon to switch from top-left to bottom-right. It’s a simple, dynamic touch that proves how important it is to use navigation menus that work around the main content of the page.

5. MASHABLE

When you’re a content nexus like Mashable, it can be a tall order displaying all your content in a conventional navigation menu. Headings, subheadings, sub-subheadings—making sure you have clarity is key to providing a good user experience for your site visitors.

That’s where their mega-menu comes in. Once you hover over the ‘More’ tab a drop-down menu spanning the entire length of your screen becomes visible. This provides the space to include a series of columns—like ‘Channels’ or ‘Company’—under which your list of subheadings can be displayed. If you’re designing a site that’s hosting a lot of content, considering a mega-menu like this one is a strategic way to handle navigation.

6. OARS

Another example of a mega-menu, travel service Oars uses a clear navigation layout to help you find what you want. For example, hovering over Destinations showcases a mega-menu divided up into Oars’ local United States destinations, International destinations, National Parks and Rivers.

Another great addition to the mega-menu design is the use of images under Your Experience, Stories+Video and Plan+Reserve headers. Making the most of the space they have, these eye-catching image panels engage site visitors and encourage click-through.

7. PAPER COLLECTIVE

Specializing in stunning art prints for the home or office, it’s clear Paper Collectivehas an eye for good design. Accordingly, they’ve made clever use of a slide-out sidebar menu—meaning that navigating their site never obscures their homepage product images, but shifts them slightly to the right instead.

8. OLYMPICS

Maybe we’re design nerds, but one of our favourite parts about the Olympic Games is seeing the logo designs each host city comes up with. Completely individual to the culture and design sensibilities of the time, they’re a great way to look back on past Games. 

This is something the navigation menu design for the IOC homepage seems mindful of—as you hover over the main ‘Olympic Games’ header each Olympic Games is represented alongside its specific logo. Laid out in a simple, streamlined way that makes navigation by chronology easy, this site sets a gold-standard for good menu design.

9. NEXT STOP

Next is a UK brand that sells everything from clothes to shoes, to flower arrangements, to furniture. As such, their navigation menu has to do a lot of heavy-lifting to display their comprehensive catalogue of products. One of the techniques they use is accordion tabs—when you hover over their Home & Furniture header you’ll see a sub-menu of tabs you can click through to see links for bedroom furniture, kitchen fittings and more! If your company has a wide range of products online, this method of dividing up headings, subheadings and sub-subheadings is a fantastic way to go.

10. ESPN

Smart navigation design means knowing what people are looking for and displaying that as easily as possible. For sporting media empire ESPN, most of their customer base are looking for one thing: the score.

With a keen awareness of this, ESPN has made the smart decision to display a Top Events navigation menu above their standard menu, giving quickview results for the latest scores in the most popular games. In combination with the standard menu (which utilises team logos under NBA, NFL, AFL, NRL & Cricket headers for easy browsing) it’s design that’s directly informed by how and why people use the ESPN site.

11. BENTLEY

Bentley is a brand which is held in high regard for their sleek car designs and, so it would seem, sleek web design too. A clever layout has made navigating the Bentley site a joy. Clicking the Models header in the top menu causes a sidebar to appear. As you hover over each car model range, you’re given a stylish sideview of the individual models on offer.

With a reputation for beautiful cars, it’s no surprise high-quality images feature so heavily in the Bentley navigation menu. It’s a lesson we can all learn when it comes to web design: if you’ve got it, flaunt it!

By Saijo George - Orginal Post: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2017/11/12-ways-to-design-the-perfect-site-navigation/

5 Easy Ways to Create Engaging Instagram Ads

5 Easy Ways to Create Engaging Instagram Ads

In a few short years Instagram has become one of the leading social networks for advertizing, with active monthly users in the US alone exp... 4:50 PM

In a few short years Instagram has become one of the leading social networks for advertizing, with active monthly users in the US alone expected to reach 104 million in the next 18 months. With almost half of all online shopping carried out on mobile, running a winning Instagram campaign is priceless to your business.

Huge global brands use Instagram to engage customers, build their brand stories, and launch new products. Follow these five killer tips for Instagram success, and you can take a piece of that pie.

1. KEEP TEXT TO A MINIMUM

Too many advertisers make the mistake of packing their advert with text. Instagram is a visual platform, and users expect to see rich, engaging imagery.

Text that works well is short and punchy. Imagine you’re running a deli on the Lower East Side. To create a smart, impactful ad you might use a tantalizing image of a bagel with three simple words, “Welcome to NY.”

Instagram is a feed, and anything in-depth is easily lost. 3–7 words is ideal, because customers will read the snippet effortlessly. You’ve got a fraction of a second to make an impact so rely on attention-grabbing imagery. Leave your text, hashtags, and any promotional details for your caption.

You need users to stop swiping and focus on your advert, and the way to achieve that is a high-quality image.

2. USE HIGH QUALITY IMAGES

It cannot be emphasized enough that the image you use to represent your brand must be the highest quality image you can manage.

In the last six months alone 775,000 Americans have made a purchase on their phone. That means that connecting with them on Instagram could be the only chance you’ll get to make a favorable impression.

Like an elevator pitch, your Instagram advert has to sell your business in seconds; with such a brief opportunity, any flaws will be magnified. When you use a high quality image, you’re telling customers that you’re a high quality business, a business that is worth their time, and money.

Fortunately you don’t need to hire an expert photographer to create your perfect shot, you’ll find something ideal, that tells your story, in Shutterstock’s extensive library.

When Levi’s were looking to grow their brand online, they used photographs of people wearing their products in the great outdoors. They reached 7.4 million Americans in just nine days, all thanks to four carefully selected images.

3. TELL A STORY

Nothing is more powerful than a brand story. Instagram gives you the option of carousel adverts, a series of images in sequence that tell your brand’s story.

The power of Instagram carousels is that once customers are swiping, and interacting with your ad, they’re not only learning about your brand, they’re invested in it. Studies suggest that our short term memory retains a message for a minute, but when we repeat the message—as is the case with Instagram carousels—the memory is retained for up to an hour.

Imagine you’re selling running shoes, you could set up a campaign that starts with a runner warming up and the caption “Get Ready to Run…”; the next slide shows the runner on the street with the caption “…And Run…”; the final slide shows the runner in the wilderness, with the caption “…And Run…”. A simple, effective, and memorable campaign.

4. SKIP THE PHOTO SEARCH WITH SHUTTERSTOCK CUSTOM

Finding the right image can sometimes be tricky. If you are really committed to finding the perfect Instagram shot, why not join corporations like MacDonalds, L’Oréal, Nestlé, Unilever, and more, by taking advantage of the Shutterstock Custom service.

With Shutterstock Custom you define your objectives using moodboards, brand guidelines, and campaign ideas. Next, Shutterstock use their expertise to match you with a supplier from their global community of hand-picked creatives. Then, you brief the creative, and get your Instagram-ready content back in just a few weeks.

By leveraging Shutterstock’s experience in the field, you can grab professional quality shots, unique to your business, for a fraction of the price of engaging your own photographer complete with studio and equipment.

Shutterstock Custom can deliver any kind of content you need, from attention-grabbing photos, to a series of illustrations, to one of the most engaging formats, video.

5. USE VIDEO & SOUND

The human eye is designed to be attracted to motion. With the majority of uploads to Instagram being still images, a professional quality video is one of the best ways of captivating customers on the platform.

Videos on Instagram can be up to a minute long, which is perfect for when you have a complex idea to convey. But videos don’t have to be long, in many cases a few seconds of motion is enough to convey your brand’s key selling points.

Producing a video can take a little more time than a single shot, and will cost slightly more to produce, but the payoff in terms of customer engagement makes the investment worth every cent.

If you want to leverage the power of video, but without the hefty production costs, you’ll find thousands of videos, perfect for Instagram, in Shutterstock’s video library.

You can also use Shutterstock’s Music or Shutterstock’s Premium Beat to add atmosphere to your ad. All Shutterstock music is royalty-free and safe to use in online campaigns on Instagram (or Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and more).

WRAPPING UP

With over 800 million active users every month, developing your brand on Instagram is one of the smartest ways you can spend your advertizing budget, and with Shutterstock you have all the content you need to entice customers.

Limit the amount of text you use, Instagram is a visual medium and never is the old cliché about a picture being worth a thousand words more true. Make a good impression by only using the highest quality images available. Tell a story with memorable content. Consider using Shutterstock Custom to create bespoke content. Embrace video to stand out from the crowd.

Follow these simple tips, and you’ll create a truly effective Instagram campaign.

By WebdesignerDepot Staff  - Orginal Post: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2017/11/5-easy-ways-to-create-engaging-instagram-ads/