Flyout Menu Use

Should I use a flyout menu on my website to help individuals navigate my site?  I am worried that the flyout menu is not going to be search engine helpful, which would reduce my SEO tactics effectiveness.

Have you asked this question to yourself?  If you are wondering what would happen if you use a flyout menu for navigation, we have a couple of  things you should know.

First of all a flyout menu can also be referred to as a drop down menu.  This means that the menu appears when you hover the mouse over the menu.  For example if you have a site on baby clothing you might have a menu titled “Boys Clothing”.  Then in the menu you will list the clothing by sizes.  For example baby clothing is usually 0-6, 6-12, etc.  So you might have the clothing listed that way or by style.  If you have superhero emblems, famous fictional characters, cars, etc. you might list them by category.

Now that you know what a flyout menu is and why you might think you need it, let’s look at the answer to the ever popular question.  A flyout menu is not usually nice to the search engine crawlers.  This is because most flyout menus are made with Javascript, which is harder to index and creates problems.

The solution to this issue is building the flyout menu with CSS. We will look at this a little more in a bit.  For now let’s consider the flyout menu from the consumer point of view.  Flyouts rely on the consumer mouse activity.  If the consumer uses their keyboard they will not be able to use the menu as easily.

Google obviously has issues with indexing.  Flyouts can also be trouble for the international user because of translation problems.  They are also hiding the links you have on your site.  If a person is not well versed in online protocol they may not realise there is a flyout menu to be used.  I can tell you from experience that inexperienced computer users tend to be very cautious and will not move around the page or click unless they understand something is there.  Submenus are also very hard to click on.  One minute the menu is there the next it disappears, and you may have just hit something else.

Flyout menus also hide other content and can stick when you want to move on to something else.  As you can see there are many downsides to the flyout menu.  Not everyone thinks the same way, so some may like them while others become annoyed.  You never want to annoy your consumer.

If you are seriously considering using flyouts consider the above information.  Also see our other article regarding flyout menus and what questions you should be asking yourself.

CSS is cascading style sheets, which is a language used in creating the flyout menu.  Since it is a markup language you need to make sure you choose CSS when creating your website design.  Thus the tools you use for creating websites should have the CSS capabilities.