Jul 09 2009
I'll come right out and say it – I'm not a big fan of drop down menus. You know the kind. You visit a site, roll over a navigation link and out comes a menu of subpages links. Aside from just plain being annoyed, I do have some concrete reasons as to why I'm not a fan, and more importantly, why they should be avoided in general.
Overcomplicate the simple
Navigation links are supposed to be simple and general. Stuffing it with hidden sub-navigation goes against that entirely. As Albert Einstein said, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." Navigation links fit right into this.
Confuses users with too many options
The freedom of choice is a great one, but when it comes to certain things like website navigation, limited options is a good thing. Too many options and a user is bound to get confused with what you've decided is the best way to categorize something. And the potential to completely miss what is being looked for resulting in frustration increases dramatically with additional options. Instead, keep your navigation general and present subpage links in a subnav on the subpage.
Search engine relevancy is watered down
As search engines crawl and index your site, one thing they look at is your site's navigation links. What these links point to is important for search engines. So having more than half a dozen or so main links easily waters down the relevancy of the main links. Keeping the number down to as few as you need plus/minus 1-2 is a good guideline.
Poor excuse for organization
This is a biggie. More often than not, sites I've seen with drop down menus have done a really poor job of organizing the site in the first place. The idea is to organize via the navigation. Tsk, tsk. That's a lame attempt at something that should have been handled with solid information architecture and/or usability (best handled by someone who knows what that means and what goes into it). Bad organization of a site will make it confusing and frustrating to visitors.
So the question is, are there any reasons to actually have and use drop-down menus? In my opinion, very rarely. Use them sparingly - they'll just complicate things anyway.