Submenu or second nav bar?

Question

I find myself in a bit of a pickle with a website I designed and coded myself.

Basically, I've gotten to a point where I need some sort of secondary menus on certain pages for example user profiles that can be seen there http://broadcasted.tv/user/2/albertmarch/

I tried to get away from it with the big buttons but there are too many pages and I'm gonna need some sort of submenu (to have user reviews, user watchlist, user followers, user ratings)... Any ideas on what could look good ? I was thinking a vertical menu on the right side might work ?

Thank you!

Answer 1

I go for a second navigation bar right under the horizontal main menu

I would not go for that since it breaks context. There's no "Users" item in the main menu.

I was thinking a vertical menu on the right side might work ?

I do not have any research at hand, but I think it's safe to consider left-hand-side navigation a de-facto standard (unless you're catering to an audience from a culture that reads right-to-left, that is).

The most pragmatic approach, in my opinion, would be to implement:

1. an overview page for the user with
   • the most important stuff available at first glance
   • maybe a "recent activity"/"activity stream" box
2. tabs for sensibly grouped in-depth info such as
   • show/episode reviews
   • watchlist
   • rating distribution
   • followers
   • ...

From my previous testing experience, I would favor horizontal tabs. Since you're talking about adding ever more features, though, you might want to consider going for vertical ones right away rather than running out of horizontal space at some point in time and having to re-do everything.

Bonus: here's a quick mockup.

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}

Answer 2

What about simple horizontal tabs menu under user info?

Horizontal tabs menu below user info(photo etc.) allow user to quick see and swap between different content in context of a user. Plus give your more space for specific content in active tab.

I've done no reasearch about that, but seems to be functional in case of your site. :)

Answer 3

need some sort of submenu (to have user reviews, user watchlist, user followers, user ratings)

I go for a second navigation bar right under the horizontal main menu, only if more than one of the menu-items from the main menu directly influences more than one submenu-items in the second navigation bar.

If not so, I believe it is better to dedicate a side-column to links for more functions on the web-site.