What if primary and secondary navigation aren’t enough?

We are all for keeping your menus limited and concise. As we have said before, you want clear site navigation so that your users can navigate your site and find what they’re looking for without getting lost or confused. But sometimes, you just aren’t able to trim it down enough: you have a lot of related items, and they’re all too crucial to cut. How do you get around this? Fortunately, we have a solution.

How 3rd Tier Navigation works on Collegiate

3rd tier navigation expands when you click on it.

We often find that, as navigation menus gain new tiers, they become more frustrating and difficult to navigate. Ever had the experience of trying to carefully hover your mouse down a series of pop-out menus trying to find the page you’re looking for only to have to start back at the beginning when your cursor slips off? It’s irritating and inconvenient. To avoid this, we’ve opted for a collapsible menu structure that only expands when you click on it.

Keep in mind that, because of the click-to-expand function, the menu item with the little arrow next to it isn’t itself a menu item. You’ll need to use redundant navigation to make sure that your members can still reach your top menu item.

How to create 3rd Tier Navigation from the backend

Drag-and-drop to reorder your menu structure.

If you need to get three levels deep on your navigation, arranging it is fairly straightforward. From the collegiate backend, simply add the pages you want to your menu, then drag and drop them to where you want them to be. Anything indented will appear as sub-items of the menu item they’re indented under.

Any more questions about sorting your navigation? We’re happy to hear them (and blog about them!).