Mobile App Navigation| Patterns and Examples
Mobile app navigation allows users to jump from one page to another smoothly. Keep reading and know what are the best patterns and examples of nav menus.
As of April 2023, there are 6.92 billion active mobile users worldwide. In this app-centric world, people always prefer to use an application that is built through app development solutions in a simple way rather than complex or fancy stuff.
In a mobile application, a number of features, components, and elements work together to enhance user experience. A navigation menu is one of them. It’s an element that not only increases mobile UX but also defines the quality of a mobile application.
Proper navigation in smartphones has become one of the great contributors to driving the attention of users. It works as a bridge that effectively fills the gap between human and app functionalities. Read the blog and know more about the mobile app navigation system and its all features.
Types of Mobile Navigation Patterns
Navigation through a mobile application must be predictable and intuitive. There is a vast range of design patterns available that designers can easily implement to make a complete navigation system in the mobile app. The top 8 mobile navigation patterns include:
1. The Hamburger Menu
The Hamburger menu, also called the navigation menu, is a very common icon with a hamburger-like shape with 3 horizontal lines. The menu section is hidden in this icon and once you click the icon, you can navigate all the menus.
As the best mobile navigator, it is widely popular among UI/UX designing professionals as it can cover the navigation between 3 lines and it helps users navigate menus more conveniently. The Hamburger Menu is small in size and it saves screen space by hiding all navigational elements.
Key benefits of this menu include:
Simplifies screen layouts
Offers direct access to navigation
Ideal for secondary access
Very easy to recognize
2. Floating Navigation Button
A floating navigation button or FAB is a circular-shaped icon that doesn’t float on the user interfaces. It mainly hovers over content for promoting the primary action in the mobile application. Just like Hamburger Menu, FAB is small in size and takes very less space on the mobile screen. However, sometimes it can distract the users. In such cases, page content may fail to notice. So, it’s not mandatory to add a FAB button on all pages. When you add this icon, you should ensure that it’s leaving a good impact on your user’s mind.
Key benefits of the FAB menu include
Small in size
Takes very little space
Enhances user experience
Easy to recognize
3. Gesture-based Navigation
Gesture-based navigation enables an immersive and excellent experience for mobile applications by allowing app users to swipe in all directions. This is a very popular navigation pattern and gained high popularity among Gen Z people. The smooth interface of gesture-based navigation makes it different from others. Moreover, this is feasible for users and it comes with a pretty UI design pattern.
Key benefits of this navigation include:
Faster, natural & ergonomic navigation pattern
Easy to use
Unique UI design pattern
Improves user experience
4. Sub-Navigation Menu
This is a unique type of navigation pattern that provides multiple hierarchy levels in the application. One of the best examples of a sub-nav app is Amazon. If you’re planning to build an app similar to Amazon, the sub-navigation menu can be the perfect choice for you.
It helps to add category and subcategory sections and enables users to navigate between pages with ease. Sub-nav menu mainly appears as a list and in a dropdown format. This navigation pattern helps to keep app content organized & makes it simpler for app users to find what they’re in search of.
Key benefits of the sub-navigation menu include.
Simple to use
Organizes the app content
Helps to navigate between pages easily
Easy to recognize
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5. Full-Screen Navigation
Till now we were only focusing on such navigation patterns that covered little screen space, but the fullscreen navigation pattern comes with a unique concept. As the name suggests, it covers the entire screen space for navigation. Key elements of full-screen navigation patterns include
Simplicity: Navigation should not be complicated. Every page must come with a simple navigation structure that ensures a smooth user experience.
Clarity: The full-screen navigation menu structure should be clear without any requirement for additional explanations.
Consistency: Users must know where they’re & how to quickly navigate back to the app pages they have browsed previously.
User orientation: A well-designed navigation menu should have the same design for all app pages without exceptions.
Key benefits of a full-screen mobile navigation menu include:
Improves user experience
Best for achieving coherence and simplicity
Excellent user orientation
Consistency and clarity
6. Tab Navigation
Tab navigation usually appears at the bottom of iOS apps & the top of Android apps. This is a UI style and navigation where information is properly organized in tabs that separate content into several sections.
The tab navigation pattern is mainly used to help users switch between pages with similar contexts. This pattern can be a great choice if you have several categories of content.
Key benefits of Tab Navigation include:
The categories properly fit in one row
Easy to recognize
Enhances user experience
7. Sidebar Navigation
Sidebar navigation is one of the best choices for designers who would like to place different categories. This navigation pattern helps to grab the user’s attention and allows them to explore specific categories. The sidebar navigation pattern works perfectly when the information architecture has many items that can’t be grouped into different buckets logically.
Key Benefits of This Navigator for Mobile Include:
Allows to include different menu items
All elements are noticeable
Supports customizable navigation
Easy to use
Utilizes little screen space
8. Top and Bottom Navigation
The top and bottom navigation bars are the two sides of a coin. A top navigation pattern contains a bar with icons and it’s located at the top of the mobile screen. The top nav bar usually shows the important links to the users. A mobile app development company also suggests integrating this navigation as it’s pretty simple & easier to use.
Bottom navigation is another side of the coin. This is a navigation pattern that simply collects primary & secondary navigation links. So that users can smoothly explore the menus with just a single tap. Another major advantage of this pattern is that users comfortably navigate with their fingers, mostly thumbs while holding their smartphone. Most bottom navigation patterns have between 3 to 5 destinations for fast access.
Key benefits of the top and bottom navigation bar include:
Makes it simple for users to click icons
Utilizes little screen space