Pages & Content
Website menus
Building the navigation, keeping it short, and letting tribes have their own.
Last updated September 2, 2026
The menu is how visitors find anything. It is also the clearest statement of what your business thinks matters, which is why it is worth arguing about.
Building one
Menus are built from your pages and ordered as you want them. A site can have more than one — a main menu and a footer menu behave differently and should contain different things.
Keep it short
- Five to seven items in the main menu. More and people read none of them.
- Use the words customers use, not your internal service names.
- Put the thing you most want people to do at the end, as a button — that is where the eye lands.
- Everything else — policies, careers, small print — belongs in the footer.
Tribe menus
Tribes can have their own menus where their site genuinely differs. Use it sparingly — a network where every location has a different navigation is a network with no brand.
TEST IT ON A PHONE
A menu that reads well across the top of a desktop becomes a long list on a phone, which is where most of your visitors are. Look at it there before deciding it is finished.