10 Best Mega Menus Examples for Inspiration in 2023

Copied

Mega Menus are a household name in the web design industry that has been around since the early 2000s. They are one of the most common features/elements in website interface design mostly used on large websites to guide web visitors on how to navigate the website to find more subordinate pages (especially eCommerce websites and online stores).

Instead of drop-down menus that have limited options, designers use mega menus to house more page navigation options. It makes it a lot easier for users to navigate deeper into a website with fewer clicks while still showing everything at a glance.

However, keep in mind that the vast number of links in Mega Menus can overwhelm the visitors, hence great care should be taken when designing them to make them appear more user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing.

In this article, we have identified 10 of our best mega menu examples for website designs and their benefits for navigation.

What are Mega Menus?

A mega menu is a two-dimensional expandable navigation menu that presents the most significant parts or areas of a large-scale website in a way that is easy to follow and navigate seamlessly.

In simple terms, mega menus are menus with dozens of links to other web pages. It allows web visitors to see and access all of the options on a website at once by breaking down every topic or product category into subcategories.

Mega menus improve user experience by making it easy to navigate seamlessly. It ensures it is well-structured and intuitive for specific websites like e-commerce websites and online stores. They can be achieved by either having a horizontal or vertical menu sidebar or dropdown display with mega menu navigation.

Without the mega menus, it would almost be impossible to navigate large websites like most e-commerce websites, online shops, and news websites. Using them helps to enhance usability, improve conversions, create more sales and keep web visitors a bit longer on the website.

Where to use a Mega Menu?

A mega menu enhances the user experience and makes navigation smooth and easy for users. If you are wondering where this applies, here is the list of the most common uses.

E-commerce websites: An online store with multiple product categories.
Hotel websites: Many hotel and resort websites have multiple categories such as reservations, brands, seasonal and special offers.
Products and services websites: Manufacturing firms and service companies with a wide variety of products and services can use mega menus to store categories and subcategories.
Blogs / Magazines / News Websites: Most media websites with a wide variety of news content can also use mega menus.

Where not to use a mega menu

Avoid using a mega menu on your website if it is:

A small brochure website with less content
Personal websites with fewer pages or singular function or topic websites.

The Impact Of Mega Menu Navigation On Websites and SEO

Here are some of the ways mega menus can impact your website and SEO

1. They Show Information Fast

Mega menu navigation provides large websites with an easy way to provide all the important information about the products and services offered by an organization to users within seconds.

2. They encourage users to stay on the website

Websites with large product categories such as Adidas, Nike, and H&M use mega menus to house all their different products.

Instead of having to go through all the pages one by one, web visitors can drop down the mega menu to see the full range of options or directly search for their product of interest to have a better user experience. This makes it a lot easier for users to stay on the site.

3. It enables you to include keywords on your menu

Mega menus enable you to add keywords to the menu to make it a lot easier for Google crawlers to identify them, thereby boosting your ranking. However, keep in mind that having too many keywords on your menus can negatively affect your rankings.

4. You can include tons of links

Mega menus enable you to add tons of links to many other pages on your website. This enables users to see and visit other pages on the website via the link, which can significantly increase your organic web traffic.

5. They are aesthetically pleasing

A website is a digital storefront that existing customers/clients and prospective clients can visit to check out a company’s product or services. They are modern web layout features that can add to the aesthetics of your website making it a lot more attractive to web users.

10 Best Mega Menus Examples in 2023

Here is a list of the 10 best mega menu examples from some of the world’s leading brands based on different functionalities or for their visually appealing designs and order value.

Mega Menu Example #1: Moosejaw

Moosejaw is an online brick-and-mortar website that specializes in rock climbing, hiking, outdoor casual wear, snowboarding, and camping gear. This website mega menu lists the different available categories and is divided into age, gender, and product.

Moosejaw is regarded as one of the mega menu dropdowns with a design that is contrasted with the header and the remaining content of a website. It is a very detailed and classic e-commerce menu that allows visitors to search products by brand or category and it’s accessible through the use of a full-width mega menu.

Mega Menu Example #2: Adidas

Adidas is the second largest and most popular sports brand with sportswear, athletic shoes, and sporting goods after Nike. From the official Adidas website, you can see the dropdown mega menu covering most of the page (though it vanishes when you move the mouse or hover away from one category to another.

The Adidas huge and well-organized mega menu covers the full width of a desktop screen with several columns of links under each primary link. Its mega menu is grouped into six categories such as What’re New, Collaborations, Our World, Sports, Originals, and Collections with its internal pages.

Mega Menu Example #3: Asana

Asana is a popular web and mobile work management platform designed to manage teams and their work. It is a popular website and a great example of a content-heavy website with a large-scale mega menu that displays the website’s massive content.

Usually, when you click on any of the main menu items, the full-width drop-down menus with multilayer navigation and logical and visually appealing organization appear. The features menu for example displays the key features with a brief description of each on the left with a relevant menu with all service plans included.

Mega Menu Example #4: Estee Lauder

Estee Lauder is a popular and top-notch cosmetics brand with various cosmetics and skin care products. It is one of the favorite mega menu examples with an excellent structured, hierarchical, and well-organized website design and style.

Its mega menu design is simple and uses black font on a plain white backdrop to emphasize the hierarchy and add to its visual appeal. The mega menu has primary subcategories that are differentiated from others through strong formatting.

Mega Menu Example #5: Walmart

Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation (one of the world’s biggest retailers) that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores. Walmart’s eCommerce website has a beautiful mega menu (drop-down) that offers visitors a unique navigation experience.

The website’s mega menu has been structured and organized effectively to provide a seamless user experience and easy access to many different types of products available on the website.

Mega Menu Example #6: Quiksilver

Quiksilver is an Australian retail sports brand considered one of the world’s largest surfwear and sports-related equipment brands. Quiksilver’s website has a minimalist style with lots of whitespaces and black text on a white background and large pictures.

Its large-scale mega menu is centered on the website leaving a lot of whitespaces. The black font is unified and hierarchy is emphasized by bolding and capitalizing.

Mega Menu Example #7: Bras N Things

Bras N Things is an eCommerce website that sells women’s underwear and materials. Its mega menu is exquisite and smooth with many subcategories. Its second-level menus use two kinds of design layouts – plain text and text with small images.

Mega Menu Example #8: Envelopes

Envelopes is a website that sells a variety of envelopes ad mailing materials. The website’s mega menus have a wide list of products that are sorted according to color, size, style, and paper texture.

They also feature a down arrow next to the title to direct the users to go over the mouse to access more material. It has been designed and divided in a way that improves search efficiency and helps users find the best solutions quickly.

Mega Menu Example #9: Atlassian

Atlassian Corporation is an Australian software company that developed tools such as Jira and Trello for project managers, software developers, and other software development teams.

It also shares guidelines, methods, and practices for great agile teamwork. Its drop-down mega menu has a massive volume of materials that have been organized neatly into sections and subcategories. Irrespective of what you are looking to achieve from planning to collaboration and security tools, it’s a lot easier to find and navigate. If you have such a website or large content, then you might want to consider using this template.

Mega Menu Example #10: Riad11

Riad11 is a hotel located in the heart of Marrakesh, Morocco. It is a perfect example of mega menu navigation with hidden menus that work for websites with fewer pages as it does not include a lot of information or multi-level categories.

When you click on the menu icon, it smoothly transforms into a full-page mega menu with creatively-styled icons for the rooms. Interestingly, it utilizes the functionality more efficiently without disrupting the user experience.

Bonus Example #11: FAO Schwarz

FAO Schwarz is a toy company well-known for its high-quality toys, games, interactive experiences, life-size stuffed animals, and brand integration. Its website features an outstanding mega menu design with information organized by age group, brand, and other categories for easy access.

The mega menu has drop-downs with multiple columns of options shown when a smooth horizontal line runs through the text. Its visually appealing layout makes it very easy to access important information.

Mega Menu Best Practices To Consider

The key idea behind creating mega menus is to enhance the overall user experience and make it easy for users to locate information easily on the website. Hence the mega menus must be well-designed, responsive, and easy to use. Importantly, a good mega menu should follow the below tips:

Use a single link color
Ensure that you have a responsive design
Keep the mega menu simple for users to scan
Avoid keeping the links too close together.
Add icons or images to make it more engaging.
Ensure that all the menu items are visible at once
Use a trigger option hover or click

Conclusion

Mega menus are significant to the successful navigation of heavy-content-based websites. Having to go through a vast list of web pages one after the other can be very exhaustive, which is why you need a mega menu to make the process easier for your web users.

Above are the 11 best mega menu examples with excellent designs and navigation styles that you can learn from for your website as we are sure these design trends will stay around for a long time. A well-designed mega menu is an efficient and cost-effective way to enable web users easily access information on a website.

However keep in mind that beyond the visual aesthetics of the mega menu navigation style and design, it is importantly user-friendly and responsive across all pages and devices.