I've taken over a website that sells downloadable software and which consists of the marketing pages that are visible to all users and a 'control panel' that is visible to logged in customers. The 'control panel' allows logged-in customers to view details of their order, invoices, submit tickets etc. As shown below when a user logs in a secondary nav bar is shown.
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea from a UX perspective to combine these menu's so that when a customer logs into the website the global nav changes so there is only a single menu bar. It seems more intuitive to me. See example implementation below:
Site visitors are either potential customers and therefor would never see the alternate navigation or are customers who are not interested in the marketing pages and are looking to administer their account. It would therefor seem that combining these navigation links would make sense.
Am I missing anything, is there any best practice rules relating to a dynamic global nav? Would you do anything different?