What is a hamburger menu?
A hamburger menu is a button with three lines on it—which vaguely resembles a hamburger, hence the name—that reveals a set of menu options when clicked.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What are the benefits of using this menu?
The biggest benefit of using is that it allows you to keep your UI clean. Instead of displaying all available menu options at once, you can tuck all of them away inside a single button.
While its effects may not be as readily noticeable on desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices with larger screens, it has a massive impact on the overall usability of a website or app on a smartphone. With such limited screen real estate even on the biggest models around, not having menu buttons eating up half the screen definitely makes a world of a difference.
Question #2: What are the disadvantages?
The biggest disadvantages of using a hamburger menu are:
- Not everyone knows what it is
- It tends to make things seem less important
- It makes the user work harder to access the content they want
Let us go over each one in more detail:
First, while most millennial and gen Z users know exactly what this menu is and how it works, a lot of older users do not. This means that if your target audience consists of an older demographic, then it may not be the best option for you—at least not on its own. It will just confuse your users, which, in turn, may lead to a higher bounce rate, lower engagement rate, and lower overall usage of your app or website.
Another downside to using this is that it makes the options and features it contains seem less important, which, in turn, makes it less likely for users to explore them.
Finally, since the hamburger menu tucks options and features away behind a single button, it makes users take extra steps to access the content they are looking for—which is a big no-no in user interface/user experience (UI/UX) design, whose goal is to help the user get to where they want to go and do what they want to do in as few steps as possible.
Question #3: When should I use a hamburger menu?
As we have seen in the previous section, the best situation to use a hamburger menu is when your target audience consists of younger users who would have no problem identifying and using it.
Keep in mind that at the end of the day, the cleaner UI that the hamburger menu brings is only worth it if it does not end up driving away your target users. So, if you know that your target audience would have trouble with this particular type of menu, make sure you either educate them on how to use it or explore alternatives—which brings us to the next point:
Question #4: What are good alternatives to the hamburger menu?
Good alternatives to the hamburger menu include:
- A floating hamburger menu
- A tabbed menu
- Labelled menu button
Let us take a closer look at each one:
A floating hamburger menu looks just like a regular hamburger menu, but instead of occupying a specific position on the app’s or website’s interface, it occupies a set position on the screen (on top of all other elements) and stays there even when the user scrolls. This execution is meant to help improve visibility and address the problem where features and options seem less important.
A tabbed menu is a row of menu buttons either at the top or bottom of the screen. Each one is linked to a particular feature or section of an app or website.
This execution can be combined with a hamburger menu if you want to make your app’s or website’s most important features or sections more easily accessible and still include all other secondary features without bombarding the user with options.
Finally, you can also just replace the three lines on the hamburger button with the word ‘menu’ to make it more easily identifiable, regardless of the age and tech-savviness of your target users.