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Stop Drop Downs… And Roll

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
June 9th, 2008
Posted In:
CSS & XHTML
Comments:
One Response, Join The Conversation.

If any option in the main menu of your website drops down to reveal more options you’ve failed at usability 101 (according to me, and I’m all that matters.. according to me).

The internet exists so people can get information quickly, when you take that statement into consideration you might come to the conclusion that drop downs are a good idea, allow users to drill down right from the start. Not so fast, if you give people 20 options right away it’s gonna slow them down, a lot. Let’s use a band website as an example, when you show up looking for tour dates you don’t want to be met with a drop down with the options “upcoming tour dates, past tour dates, booking information, tour photos”, you just want tour dates. If you want past tour dates, that’s fine, have a sub menu containing the other sections inside the tour dates section.

Presenting every option available right from the start is never a good idea, make your main menu options very broad and just get the users inside your website. When you walk into a department store you want to go to a specific department and go from there, you don’t want 100 signs hanging from the ceiling saying “men’s underwear, hula hoops, cat food”, you’d have to read all 100 signs before acting rather than just getting into the department you want and going from there.

Don’t make people stand there at the front of the store reading signs for 5 minutes before buying underwear!

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Comments

  1. Mat Says:
    July 10th, 2008 at 5:11 pm

    I disagree… but only kind of… If you’ve got a huge site, dropdowns can help with usability… I once worked on a site that had so many sections, subsections, and sub sub sections, that getting to a specific page would require a ton of clicks through a ton of pages. Having a dropdown allowed the user to quickly get to a subsection they were interested in.

    Basically, yeah, put some thought into it, and don’t go overboard… All things in moderation. If you can justify a dropdown from a usability perspective, knock yourself out. If you’re using the things because you’re trying to make an effort to be slick, trendy and Web 2.0, then reconsider their use.

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