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Mega menus are great ways to visually display links in categories or groupings of common elements. Provides a way to close the menu (either by way of hovering off of the space occupied by the menu or by clicking any type of close link/button).Serves a distinct navigational purpose (a sitemap as a fly-out isn’t really a mega menu).Little to no scrolling once displayed (relegated to the desktop experience).Displaying two or more levels or a dual hierarchy navigation that reflects groupings of links.In general, you could quantify a mega menu as: The Nielson Norman Group does a great job of defining mega menus, particularly by outlining characteristics that separate them from a traditional, basic approach to screen navigation. It’s important to make a distinction between a mega menu and a traditional sub-menu that might appear when hovering over navigation links.
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Think Amazon’s famous “Shop by Department” button which does a great job of presenting an easy portal to Amazon’s many businesses areas without ever leaving a page or without sorting through miles of links. In the wild for quite a long time, mega menus are most often seen in a desktop environment. Think of it like a hover navigation on steroids or in more online vernacular, a more efficient way to present a large number of links within a browser on hover or click without a single, long, scrolling menu.
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The concept of mega menus has been around for a number of years in a variety of visual formats but the idea is generally the same. Build faster, better website navigation without compromising your visitor experience using mega menus.
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