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I'm a frontend dev helping a local nonprofit with their website redesign.

Their "about us" section is rather extensive and contains several things such as the team, history, goals etc.

Currently they have and about us in the top main navigation which has a dropdown with the specific parts of about us.

I'm not a big fan of dropdowns for presentational websites and I was thinking of putting the menu for those subpages next to the content.

Illustrated below:

      main-menu
-----------------------
submenu|content of page
       |
       |

What are your thoughts guys?

EDIT: Here is the design:

enter image description here

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  • This will probably depend on the case: the page layout, the amount of elements in the menu, in the side menu, the importance of each of them, etc. If you could include some kind of image or at least the amount of links included in the whole menu, I think I would help to give a more practical suggestion :)
    – Alvaro
    Commented Jan 29, 2017 at 15:03
  • It might help if you provided a working prototype in a code snippet here (since you are a front end dev after all)
    – Tim Grant
    Commented Jan 29, 2017 at 16:02
  • I've added a snapshot from the design :)
    – IamLee
    Commented Jan 29, 2017 at 17:52
  • Not an exact duplicate but could help: ux.stackexchange.com/questions/187/…
    – locationunknown
    Commented Jan 29, 2017 at 18:25

1 Answer 1

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My suggestion is to use only one of the two. So either:

  • Keep the menu in the top with a submenu opening on click
  • Keep only a sidebar on the left. It could collapse/expand the submenu on click, or you could omit the submenu (depending on the amount of elements and its hierarchy) as you have more space than horizontally.

The problem about separating the menu into different parts of the site is that the "less obvious" one might not be understood. In your case this is more relevant as the left sidebar might look like it belongs (and refers) to the page content because it is inside its container; and, I guess, it scrolls with it.

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  • I know it's a bit late, however the left sidebar will only be visible on this specific page and toggle the content only on this specific page. I feel like you understood that this side menu vill be another global menu but it won't be. Would it be okay then?
    – IamLee
    Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 17:40
  • @IamLee you mean in the About us page?
    – Alvaro
    Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 17:43
  • Yes, it will only be visible and used there. Once you click an item inside the leftsidebar it will toggle (probably ajax = no refresh) to other content relevant to about us such as history, team etc.
    – IamLee
    Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 17:47
  • @IamLee in such case I think it is as a page navigation. But in that case I don't think it is a good idea to show only part of the content, you could use it to quickly scroll to that section. Take a look at how it works here (click in the Content links).
    – Alvaro
    Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 17:55
  • Thanks for the input I will consider that option as well and maybe do some A/B testing which i don't believe I'll find time to do :)
    – IamLee
    Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 18:03

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