Having an effective navigation system on your website is essential to allow visitors to see all the valuable content easily. One of the best ways to make sure that your site has high usability and visitors spend more time viewing your content is by using a navigation (menu) plugin on your site. With the default WordPress menus, you can’t make larger mega menus and it doesn’t have media support. But with this plugin, you can add rich menus and even animation effects to your website navigation areas.
To prevent you from installing too many wrong plugins that only take up space on your server, we have provided the 10 best navigation plugins to use on your website.
What is a Navigation Plugin?
A navigation plugin is a plugin that allows you to implement navigation menus on your WordPress website. Every website needs clear and precise navigation to significant pages to help users get there very easily. Nobody wants to spend 5 minutes trying to figure out the pricing plan of your service. Hence, we implement a simple navigation menu at the header of the website.
In order to make this process easier, WordPress navigation menu plugins are created. Using these plugins, you can add, edit, customize, and configure navigation on your website. These navigation blocks can be placed on the header, footer, sidebar, or wherever the plugin allows you to.
What are the best Navigation Plugins for WordPress?
Implementing a great menu is the start of any successful website. You should ensure that your website has clear navigation, helping users to reach the important parts of your website from almost any page. To make that possible, we have hand-picked some of the best Navigation Plugins for WordPress.
1. UberMenu
UberMenu is a navigation plugin for WordPress with over 80,000 installs. This super responsive plugin has a lot of features that will make your navigation areas pop. When you install UberMenu, you get many pre-built menus you can customize for your website. The plugin gives you various types of menus such as drop-down menus, flyout menus, mega menus, and tabbed menus. With the dynamic menu, you can create your menu once and the plugin will keep updating it. It is mobile-responsive; your menus look great on any device and screen size. You’re free to determine what you want your site to look like.
Features
- Responsive design for all devices (Mobile, Tablets, and Desktop)
- Pre-built menus with customization options
- Various menu types such as drop-down, flyout, mega, tabbed
- A Dynamic menu that updates automatically
- Extensive control over menu appearance and layout
- Mobile-friendly menus with great visual appeal
- Integration of media elements within menus
- Multiple animation effects for menu transitions
- Advanced styling options for menus and submenus
- Flexible positioning and placement of menus
2. Superfly
Superfly is a popular plugin with very nice features that will upgrade your site’s navigation area. If you’re looking for a plugin that will boost the space efficiency of your navigation area, then you’ve found it. The vertical menu system of the Superfly plugin helps you space your menus whatever way you want. There are various presentation options for you to choose from, and you also get to control what content you place in your vertical menu bar areas. One unique feature you won’t get in many other plugins is the ability to display a contact form in your menu area. Superfly makes your navigation areas fancy on every device.
Features
- Multiple presentation options for menu design
- Vertical menu system with customizable spacing options
- Ability to display a contact form within the menu
- Enhanced navigation experience (responsive)
- Easy customization of menu content and appearance
- Stylish and visually appealing menu areas
- Smooth and intuitive menu transitions and effects
- Support for adding images and icons to menus
- Flexible configuration for different menu bar areas
- Incorporate various content types in the menu
3. Mega Main Menu
Mega Main Menu is another WordPress navigation plugin that gives you over 10 different drop-down styles to use. Using this plugin, you can enable animation styles while your menus are displayed. It also features various types of text, images, colors, and icons. With the normal WordPress menu system, you only get single-column drop-down menus. But with Mega Main Menu, you can add multi-column drop-down menus to your website. You can stand out from other sites by adding your brand logo to your menu areas. With Mega Main Menu, your menus look great on every device and your page still runs as fast as ever.
Features
- Over 10 drop-down styles with animations
- Multi-column drop-down menus for enhanced navigation
- Extensive customization options for text, images, colors, and icons
- Integration of brand logos within menus
- Optimized performance for better page speed
- Easy menu management and organization
- Compatibility with all popular WordPress themes
- Support for different types of media elements
- Customizable styling for individual menu items
- Mobile-friendly menus with responsive design
4. Hero Menu
Hero Menu handles your menu areas in just a few steps. The most interesting feature of this plugin is the mega menu. It is easy and straightforward to add icons and organize your links in the multilevel drop-down menu system and multi-column format. In your menu, you can insert images of varying sizes and also display the featured images of your blog posts on the menu. In your drop-down area, you can add Google Maps and even a contact form. You don’t need coding knowledge to control Hero Menu. You can create enhanced website menus with the drag-and-drop editor.
Features
- Mega menu support for organizing links and icons
- Simple and intuitive menu customization
- Display of featured images and blog post previews in menus
- Multilevel drop-down menus
- Integration of Google Maps and contact forms in menus
- Drag-and-drop editor for easy menu creation
- Seamless integration with various WordPress themes
- Ability to add images and videos to the menu items
- Advanced menu styling options and css effects
- Efficient and optimized menu rendering for fast performance
5. Slick Menu
Slick Menu gives you a live customizer interface to create your site menus. As you make changes, you see everything in real-time, just like the WordPress Customizer. With this plugin, you can build out menus of different layers based on your preference. One unique feature it offers is the ability to use a YouTube video as the menu background. You can also add content filters to your site when a menu is open, making it stand out. This plugin makes creating brilliant menus on your site very easy.
Features
- Creation of multi-layered menus based on preferences
- Live customizer interface for real-time menu creation and customization
- Use of YouTube videos as menu backgrounds
- Easy customization of menu layout, theme, and colors
- Support for fly-out menus in different directions
- Intuitive and user-friendly menu management
- Content filters for enhanced menu visibility
- Integration of custom content inside menu items
- Smooth and visually appealing menu animations
- Creation of stunning menus with minimal effort
6. WP Mega Menu Pro (Discontinued)
With WP Mega Menu Pro, you get a lot of designs and templates you can play with. When you install and activate this plugin, it gives you 14 different menu styles in vertical and horizontal formats. You have access to customization controls, so you can design your menu areas in areas however you want. Another interesting feature of WP Mega Menu Pro is the ability to design custom tabbed mega menus. With this menu, you can display various kinds of content in your sidebar, from link icons to images and texts. It has so many widgets you can include on your site to make it look professional.
Features
- Vertical and horizontal menu styles based on your preferences
- Wide range of designs and templates for menus
- Custom tabbed mega menus for versatile content display
- Support for various widgets to enhance menu functionality
- Easy customization of menu areas with intuitive controls
- Efficient and optimized menu rendering
- Integration with popular drag-and-drop builders
- Professional-looking menus with branding options
- Comprehensive menu styling options and effects
- Seamless compatibility with different WordPress themes
7. Max Mega Menu
Max Mega Menu has been installed on over 300,000 websites. If you don’t want to spend money on a menu plugin and still want great features, this free navigation plugin is a good option. Max Mega Menu focuses on adding mega menus to your WordPress site irrespective of the theme you’re using. This plugin uses a drag-and-drop editor which helps you to quickly organize your menu and customize it to your preference.
It allows you to manually add widgets to your menu areas and provides extra styling options such as icons and animations. In addition, you can also configure it to implement additional tags such as nofollow on your menu items. This plugin also has a premium version you can upgrade to when you need extra features.
Features
- Free navigation plugin with numerous features
- Integration of widgets within menu areas
- Drag-and-drop editor for quick menu building an organization
- Additional styling options such as icons and animations
- Configurable implementation of tags like nofollow
- Accessible and user-friendly menu configuration
- Compatible with any WordPress theme
- Support for mega menus with nested submenus
- Mobile-friendly menus
- Customization options for menu colors and fonts
- Integration of images and icons in menu items
- Easy management of menu items and hierarchy
8. Responsive Menu
Responsive Menu is another free navigation plugin with a huge variety of customization options for you. If you already have an idea of what your website menu should look like, Responsive Menu will help you bring it to life. With this plugin, you can set the layout, theme, and colors. You get access to fly-out menus and choose which direction they come out from. There are also several other horizontal and vertical plugins available to you. As you can tell from the name, this is a responsive plugin that supports all devices. You get to control how your menus appear on smartphones and tablets. It has a premium version that gives you access to more features.
Features
- Layout, theme, and color settings for menus
- Extensive customization options for menu appearance
- Horizontal and vertical menu variations
- Fly-out menus with customizable direction
- Responsive design for optimal viewing
- Control over menu behavior and animation effects
- Support for multiple levels of dropdowns
- Integration with numerous menu plugins and extensions
- Mobile-specific menu configuration options
- Premium version available with additional features
9. Groovy Mega Menu
Groovy allows you to pick the exact header and menu you admire and use its styling and customization options to turn your dreams into reality. It comes with predefined layouts, so you don’t need to start anything on your own. You also get vertical, horizontal, and mega menus like other navigation plugins on this list. This plugin is also compatible with all the popular drag-and-drop builders such as Gutenberg, Beaver, Elementor, and WPBakery.
Features
- Selection of predefined layouts for easy setup
- Vertical, horizontal, and mega menu styles
- Compatibility with popular drag-and-drop builders
- Support for various content types within menus
- Customization options for header and menu styling
- Responsive design for mobile screens
- Integration of images, icons, and widgets in menus
- Easy implementation of branding elements
- Advanced customization of menu colors and fonts
- Flexible placement and positioning of menus
10. WP Mobile Menu
If you notice from your site analytics that most of your traffic is coming from mobile devices, then you can try to customize your menu areas to suit your mobile users and increase responsiveness. WP Mobile Menu makes your site menu even easier to use on mobile devices. It provides a multi-level drop-down feature and allows you to insert your brand logo and add images in your headers.
Features
- Multi-level dropdown feature for organized navigation
- Improved mobile menu experience for increased usability
- Brand logo integration in menu headers
- Addition of images and custom content in headers
- Easy customization of menu colors, effects, and styles
- Responsive design optimized for mobile devices
- Smooth and intuitive touch interactions
- Lightweight and fast-loading menu functionality
- Compatible with popular WordPress themes
- Enhanced accessibility for mobile users