Vertical menus: to remove, or not to remove

Answering the question of when to remove a vertical menu
Image by Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash.

The vertical menu on the left-hand side of most WMS pages is an important way for visitors to navigate a site, but perchance, it can make sense to remove it in order to simplify the user experience.

What determines when this is a good decision or not? As Shakespeare would say, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.” 

A good scenario would be a primary landing page that clearly recreates what would be the vertical menu through the use of other navigational elements such as blocks. Leaving the vertical menu in place would be fine, but the duplication would be redundant and... "therein lies the rub."

Removing the vertical menu would:

  1. Allow you to take advantage of the space freed up on the left-hand side of the page so that the content in the Body has more room to breathe
  2. Allow your visitors to scan the page more quickly in order to funnel them where they need to go efficiently and effectively

After all, “brevity is the soul of wit.”

Here are some good examples where the vertical navigation on a top-level page was reproduced within various template blocks:

 

 

The next time you're reorganizing your content, think about simplifying the menu structure and whether your landing page could benefit from removing the vertical menu.

If you think your page fits the bill, just submit a request through the IT Portal website and the Web Services Group will make an assessment — eliminating the vertical menu if warranted — as in Shakespeare's words, “sweets to the sweet.”

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