6 ways to fix your Shopify navigation menu before Black Friday

Shopify navigation menu best practices come down to one job: help a shopper get from any page to the right products in as few clicks as possible. That means a short top level, labels that name what you sell, drop-downs your theme can actually show, and a search box that catches everyone the menu misses.

This guide walks through eight changes you can make in your Shopify admin today, using the settings Shopify documents. By the end you will have a cleaner main menu, a plan for adding and removing a Black Friday link without leaving broken pages behind, and a way to see what shoppers looked for and didn't find.

1. Start from what shoppers came to buy

Before you open the menu editor, write down the five to seven ways a shopper would describe what they want from your store. Think in product types (cleansers, serums, sunscreen), needs (dry skin, sensitive skin) or occasions (gifts, travel sizes).

Then check that each of those groups exists as a collection. Shopify's menu editor links to resources that already exist, so you generally need to create a collection, page or similar resource before you can add it to a menu. If a group you wrote down has no collection, build it first. Our guide to Shopify collection page best practices covers how to set those collections up so they are worth landing on.

2. Keep the top level short and specific

Shopify's own guidance on drop-down menus recommends seven or fewer top-level items to avoid overcrowding.

• Use the words shoppers use. "Serums" tells a shopper more than "Products" or "Shop".
• Put your best-selling categories first. Items display on your store in the order they are listed in the menu.
• Move company pages such as About, Contact and Careers to the footer menu, where shoppers who need them look for them.
• Avoid two top-level items that lead to nearly the same collection. Shopify notes that giving each navigation link a unique target page helps avoid the wrong submenu showing.

3. Build drop-downs your theme can show

To edit a menu, go to Content > Menus in your Shopify admin and click the menu's title. Click Add menu item, enter a name, then use the Search or paste a link field to pick a destination such as a collection, product, page, blog post or policy. Click Add, then save the menu.

To turn an item into a drop-down, drag it by its handle so it sits under the header item and is indented. Shopify says most themes support up to two levels of nested drop-down menus, so check your theme's documentation and test the structure on desktop and mobile before you rely on a third level.

Two details make drop-downs easier to use:

• Headers that only open a list. If a top-level item such as "Shop by concern" should open a drop-down rather than a page, enter # in its link field.
• A way to the full category. Headers that control a submenu usually work as buttons, not links. Shopify suggests adding the category page as the first item inside the drop-down so shoppers can still reach it, for example "All serums" at the top of the Serums list.

Which menu your header shows is set in your theme. In most themes you can change the main menu in the Header section settings of the theme editor.

4. Edit without breaking links

Shopify's guide to editing menus lists a few ways it happens:

• Select links from the drop-down. Pasting a URL instead of selecting the page, or changing a menu item's URL, can break the link and cause a 404 error. Pasting a URL and pressing Enter without selecting the drop-down result won't add the link at all.
• Watch what you delete. If you delete a product, collection or page used in a menu, its menu item is deleted too. Deleting a menu item also removes the items nested under it.
• Save as you go. Every add, edit, delete or move counts as a change, and after 200 changes Shopify restricts further actions until you save.

5. Plan your Black Friday link, and its exit

A sale collection linked from the main menu gives shoppers who arrive on any page a direct route to the offer. The risk comes afterwards: when the sale ends and you delete that collection or change its URL handle, any old links, ads and search results that point to it lead to a page that no longer exists.

Plan the exit at the same time as the launch:

1. Create the sale collection and add it as a top-level menu item for the sale period.
2. When the sale ends, remove the menu item. If you also delete the collection, its old address stops loading a page.
3. Go to Content > Menus, click View URL Redirects, then Create URL redirect. Enter the old collection address in Redirect from and an evergreen collection in Redirect to, then click Save redirect.

Shopify's URL redirect documentation explains that a redirect only works when the old address is broken. If the URL still loads a valid page, the redirect won't work, so the redirect belongs after the collection is gone, not before.

6. Make search catch what the menu misses

Shopify's storefront search returns results from your store's products, blog posts and pages, and predictive search suggests results as the shopper types. Predictive search only shows if it is a feature of your published theme, and by default it returns query, product, collection and page results.

Shopify's free Search & Discovery app lets you adjust results. A product boost, set under Apps > Search & Discovery, then Search and Product boosts, ranks chosen products higher for search terms you add, up to 10 terms per boost. Shopify recommends boosting a single product or a small number of products for specific terms, and a product is only boosted while it is available for sale.

To find the gaps, open the Top online store searches with no results report under Analytics > Reports. It lists the search terms shoppers used that returned nothing, with a delay of up to 72 hours. Each term is a candidate for a clearer product title, a new collection, or a new menu label.

A worked example: a skincare store's menu

Say you sell skincare and your main menu reads: Shop, Bestsellers, New, About, Blog, Contact. This is a hypothetical store, and the menu is an example.

Before: "Shop" opens one long collection of every product. Shoppers looking for sunscreen have to scroll or search. About, Blog and Contact take up half the header.

After:

• Cleansers, Serums, Moisturizers, Sunscreen: each links to its own collection.
• Shop by concern (link set to #): a drop-down with "All products" first, then Dry skin, Sensitive skin and Breakouts.
• Black Friday: added for the sale, removed afterwards with a redirect to Bestsellers.
• About, Blog and Contact move to the footer menu.

That is six top-level items during the sale and five after it, inside Shopify's seven-item guidance. Two weeks later, the no-results report shows shoppers searching "spf". The store adds "SPF" to its sunscreen product titles so the term finds a match, then boosts its main sunscreen for that term.

Where Atomato fits next to your menu

If you use Atomato and set its bell to display in your header, it sits near the cart or menu and opens a feed of your announcements. A NotiFeed message can carry a button link to a page, product or collection, so during a sale it can point shoppers to the same sale collection your menu links to, as part of a Black Friday on-site message plan. When you redesign the header or menu, run Choose bell placement again in Atomato and save, as the bell setup guide recommends. On the free Starter plan you get one active NotiFeed campaign with one message; Scale ($49.99 a month) allows up to six messages per campaign and start and end dates.

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What a better menu won't fix

• Weak collections. A clear label that opens a thin or badly sorted collection still loses the shopper.
• Slow pages. Navigation can't help if each click takes a long time to load. Our guide to Shopify store speed covers how to find slow pages.
• Theme limits. If your theme doesn't show a third menu level, menu settings alone won't add one. Check your theme's documentation or consider updating the theme.
• Untested mobile menus. Shopify suggests testing drop-downs on mobile to confirm they expand as expected. A menu that works on desktop can still be hard to use on a phone.

Navigation checklist

• Seven or fewer top-level items, named after what you sell
• Every menu item linked by selecting the destination, not pasting a URL
• Drop-downs no deeper than your theme supports, with the category page as the first item
• Headers that only open a list set to #
• Company pages in the footer menu
• A sale menu item with a dated plan to remove it and redirect the old address
• Predictive search working in your published theme
• The no-results search report reviewed regularly
• The menu tested on desktop and mobile after every change

Common questions

How many items should a Shopify menu have?

Shopify recommends seven or fewer top-level items to avoid overcrowding. Use drop-downs for anything that doesn't fit, within the levels your theme supports.

How do I create a drop-down menu in Shopify?

In Content > Menus, open the menu and drag an item by its handle so it sits under a header item and is indented, then save. Most themes support up to two levels of nested drop-downs.

Why aren't my drop-down items showing?

Check that each nested item is fully under its header and indented, and that your theme supports that depth. If you see the error "Menu cannot contain nested menus", Shopify says the store may need the nested navigation feature turned on, which typically affects stores created before 2018, and to contact Shopify Support.

How do I make a menu heading that doesn't link to a page?

Enter # in the item's link field. Give it a descriptive name, such as "Shop by category", and add the category page as the first item in its drop-down.

Next step

Open Content > Menus, count your top-level items, and rename any that don't say what a shopper will find. Then pull the no-results search report and fix the top few terms before your Black Friday traffic arrives.

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