Ive seen a lot of very successful sites of big companies like mailchimp and others with minimalistic top navigations consisting of 3-5 buttons, but big footers where detailed navigation is located.
My assumption is, if someone is looking for certified partners or support he will find the links in the footer, top navigation is reserved for potential new clients.
The website im about to design has a lot of content and big sections like
- support
- partners
- services
- industries
- about us
- news
and even more. Currently it has 4 level drop down navigation.
Question is, which of those is safe to move to the footer and remove from the top navigation?
In a perfect world I would only have links at the top i need to market the product, maybe 3-4 links. But is it safe to assume, that if a user is interested in partners he will look for the link in the footer? For me the footer has allways been my second choise of navigation, but for other users?
tldr
Is it safe to put big chunks of the navigation in the footer, do people look in the footer if they dont find what they are looking for in the top navigation?