March 28, 2024

30 Examples of Excellent Website Navigation

A website’s navigation allows visitors to get from page to page and discover content. That makes it pretty important, I would say. However, some designers feel the need to experiment and try to be clever with navigation design, but when getting around a website becomes a puzzle, visitors will more often leave frustrated. A website’s nav or menu should look like a nav. It should stand out while still matching the rest of the design, and it should be in a location where users expect it. So to give you some inspiration in this area, here are 30 Examples of Excellent Website Navigation.

The Idea Lists

website navigation

Collision

website navigation

Tobias Ahlin

website navigation

Carbonmade

website navigation

dConstruct 2010

website navigation

Jeroen Homan

website navigation

Brizk Design

website navigation

Dribbble

website navigation

Buffalo

website navigation

TedxToronto

website navigation

David A. Molanphy

website navigation

Fully Illustrated

website navigation

Live Books

website navigation

Rich Brown

website navigation

I Love Dust

website navigation

Blue Sky Resumes

website navigation

Soh Tanaka

website navigation

Kyle Myer

website navigation

Yaron Schoen

website navigation

Unconventional Guides

website navigation

HAUS

website navigation

Christopher Meeks

website navigation

Dan Wiersema

website navigation

Williamson County Casa

website navigation

Marie Catrib’s

website navigation

The Design Cubicle

website navigation

Exclusive Reels

website navigation

AFD Folio

website navigation

Veerle’s Blog

website navigation

Drexler

website navigation

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Henry Jones is a web developer, designer, and entrepreneur with over 14 years of experience. He is the founder of WDL and ThemeTrust.

23 Comments

  1. Warren Jerzyszek Reply

    Oh my god! this list is really great. I’ve had a look through most of them and I have discovered a pretty amazing site for both navigation and talent…fullyillustrated is a pretty mind blowing website. I wonder how he did the navigation, its obviously got to be some kind of jquery but which one?

  2. Fredrik S Reply

    Don’t see what’s so excellent about it. It’s an average of three to four links. It doesn’t get interesting before you’ve got a complex navigation to solve in a neat way – if you find complex navigation situations that are EXCELLENT – that would be a truly excellent read! 🙂

    Thanks anyway.

  3. Andy Reply

    hmm… the smattering i went through all seemed pretty obvious and by the numbers in execution to me. didn’t see anything particularly new.

    and if anything, i saw a few that would be totally let down when it comes to a touch based input system where there’s no hover (iPad etc). designers have to start contending for the fact that the cursor / hover navigation paradigm is shifting.

  4. Kerem Reply

    I LOVE LOVE LOVE “The Idea Lists”. It’s fantastic. Nice round-up.

    I’m satisfied with my site’s navigation as well btw 🙂

  5. ddeja Reply

    I wasn’t looking at all of them but…

    The “Idea Lists” – i think there’s a small defect on the drop down element. After clicking on it the cursos goes to default (i think it should stay as pointer).

    I like also Brizk Desing even though I don’t really like those one page sliding websites.

    And my favourite TedxToronto – clean, simple and beautiful font.

    Cheers.

  6. Rick Lecoat Reply

    Everyone seems very impressed with these navigation examples, and yes they do look lovely, but has anyone stress-tested them in any way beyond simply ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the pretty graphics? And by stress test I mean even the very basics?

    The very first two I looked at (Collision and Exclusive Reels) break as functional navigation with Images turned off. At least ER regains some usability if you turn off CSS (the text links become visible again as unstyled text); Collision, incredibly, doesn’t even provide for that eventuality, with empty links in its navigation markup.

    If web design is nothing more than making things pretty then, yes, these are excellent examples of navigation. If, on the other hand, you subscribe as I do to the notion that web design is *also* about ideas such as usability, accessibility and graceful degradation/progressive enhancement — rather than just catering to the highest common denominator — then both those sites get an F.

    Sorry to be blunt about it.

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