Making sure that your website not only looks great, but is also easy to use, is an important consideration for any company or business. To achieve this, your website navigation bar will need to be practical, responsive and fully functional. One design option is to use a sticky header. But what is this? And what are the benefits of using a sticky header in web design?Well, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we build websites specifically tailored to the requirements of companies and businesses across Manchester and the North West, including Blackburn and Chorley. We provide the perfect web design solutions for clients in all areas of business and industry. As a result, we have produced this guide to everything you should know about sticky headers in web design.
What are sticky headers?
Sticky headers are navigation bars that are designed to move down the screen when the website user scrolls. These often shrink in size so that they don’t take up too much of the screen space as the website user scrolls.
What are the advantages of sticky headers in web design?
There are a number of benefits and advantages to using sticky headers in web design. These advantages include:
- Improving the user experience- if your website has long pages with a lot of content this can help inform your website users and provide all the details needed. However website users don’t want to scroll all the way back up the page after reading the content. A sticky header saves this problem by positioning the navigation bar on part of the screen, wherever the website user ends up. This solves a problem for the website user with a simple solution, improving their browsing experience.
- Responsive design- a sticky header can be effectively designed to be responsive and change shape and size depending on the size of the screen or device used to access the website. This means that the navigation options will be easy to use. It is worth noting that for mobile devices a hamburger menu is the most effective option because this takes up less space on the screen, but the hamburger menu can also be part of this sticky header.
- Unobtrusive- a sticky header is most often designed to reduce in size and be positioned to take up as little space as possible, while still being useful.
What are the alternatives to sticky headers?
If a sticky header is not appropriate for your website, one of the most effective alternatives is to use a vertical menu on the left hand side of the screen. This leaves 80% of the screen free for content, while also ensuring that the navigation bar can be accessed from anywhere. A slide out menu can also be a very effective alternative.
For more information or advice, or for high quality, professional web design solutions, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.