Design Decisions Top or Left Navigation on NetSuite Web Sites

Before designing NetSuite web store we always investigate with the customer the different options about how the website will,

1- Navigate,
2- Top Funnels, and
3- how it will integrate to NetSuite to make it as dynamic as possible.

What we bring today is our input on Navigation.

Top horizontal vs. left vertical navigation vs. both.

Top horizontal navigation has the advantage of all being above the fold, and gets presented in a nice neat package up there with your logo. Furthermore, it doesn’t hoard much of your precious real estate, the way that left navigation does. After all, even if your left navigation only has seven or eight options, your designer will probably keep you from wrapping text around it (and thereby prevent you from using the white space below it. Although, you could use the space for surveys or testimonials or news or snippets from your blog.) Top horizontal has another advantage — you can add a blog much easier to your site. Blogs tend to have a side horizontal nav bar already. You could still do them on opposite sides of the page, especially if you don’t have to design for 800×600.

On the other hand, it is much harder to extend horizontal navigation - it can only get as wide as your customers’ browsers .

So I will make sweeping generalizations, if everyone who reads recognizes that the only “good” navigation is the one that is good for you. If you are a small lead generation website that wants to have Services, Products, Partners, About Us and Contact Us in your navigation (I really hate those, but more later), then go ahead and do the horizontal thing. If you are a large website, especially an e-commerce website with lots of products, you probably have to do the vertical navigation. If you are Amazon, you probably have so many products that you need to do both. And if you are a content site, like CNN (don’t you hate their newest redesign?) your whole site is really one big piece of navigation, because everywhere you turn, you are linking to another story.

Having said that, it depends. Yes, it depends. Always try to think about this as it is KEY for the success of your website. Create 3 funnels, and draw them in a piece of paper. What will the user see after each click? What if they entered the incorrect funnel, how can they go back and start again?