Awesome 40 Stylish Navigation Menu Examples – You Should See 2013

Design, placement and prominence of navigation menus are important for the success of a website. Without a clear, attractive and user-friendly navigation setup, a website will not reach that far in terms of developing relationship with its visitors and establishing a reputable name in the web. A shabby and poorly executed navigation structure will leave the readers frustrated and this can effectively kill the likelihood of having them go for a return visit.

Usability and User Experience

From the standpoint of usability and user experience, a navigation menu should be able to help the visitors find content and pages of a website easily. All this in a nice and greatly encouraging design that tends to invite the visitors to explore the website further. Indeed, the usefulness, or shall we say effectiveness in helping people find contents that they want and attractiveness in its design are the cornerstones of website navigation menus. They matter a lot, and so every designer has to put some effort to ensure that his navigational setup satisfies this concept of aesthetics and functional requirements. Here you will see, some inspirational website menus that hit the mark (IMHO). Let us check these out and see if we can learn anything from them. You can also share your website’s navigation menu if you believe it is something worth including in this category.

Custom Toronto

Custom Toronto has a unique, unobtrusive vertical navigation menu with pleasant color combination on hover.
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Kirk Whalum

A simple yet unique menu is what makes this website of Kirk Whalum a draw. Its grid-like appearance is highlighted by colors which are congruent to the background.
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Explovent

Explovent utilizes an engraved effect on hover to highlight the navigation link.
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Blue Moon

Blue Moon has a grunge and textured navigation menu that displays rust outline on links when hovered.
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The Ad Feed

The Ad Feed utilizes different colors on the edge of the drop-menu links for emphasis.
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Jeff Sarmiento

Jeff Sarmiento is a designer and his navigation speaks well of a friendly, creative and prominent menu presentation with different vivid colors as background on hover.
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Blogger Bake Off

Blogger Bake Off has a big navigation menu that gives off pleasant color combination on hover.
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Tennessee Vacation

Tennessee has pleasant colors on its drop-down menu.
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Madison

Madison is quite a busy e-commerce website with lots of items to sell. It is equipped with a navigation menu that drops down to display a huge list of items in store. All without disturbing the overall layout of the site.
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Sarah Hyland

Sarah Hyland’s personal website, has unique doodles for icons on its menu.
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MacRabbit

MacRabbit scores points on creative side of things with its navigation menu with icons that glow on hover.
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30elm

30elm has a simple, clean, display-all navigation menu on the header which is easily recognizable.
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South Creative

South Creative’s no frills, no flashes approach in its header navigation is really something worth noting. It is simple, clean, and very effective.
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Ten Out of Tenn

Ten Out of Tenn has a navigation menu that matches the overall look feel of the site. It looks cool and hand drawn and forms an integral part of site.
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Adidas

Adidas successfully integrates a large menu on a horizontal header navigation while retaining the website’s usability and aesthetics.
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Andy Waldrop

Andy Waldrop has a subtle yet great navigation design complemented with colors on top to draw the eyes towards it.
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Bay Realty

Bay Realty has a menu that gives out a fancy ribbon-like effect.
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Sower of Seeds

This website has a boldface and pointer effect on hover.
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Cosmic Soda

Cosmic soda has a navigation menu that looks like comic dialog boxes with simple animation effect on hover.
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Vitamin T

Vitamin T has a powerful and pleasant color combination that shows up when the navigation links are hovered upon.
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Worship Leader Insights

Worship Leader Insights has a beautiful grungy left sidebar menu conspicuously displayed for easy accessibility.
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Collaborative Fund

Collaborative Fund has a subtle texture in its header and main content. It menu has a clean design that uses sans serif font, and subdued shadows.
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Hungarian Wine

Quite similar to the above website in typography is this website dedicated to fine wines. It has a simple navigation menu arranged neatly with nothing but underline text decoration on hover.
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Graphic All Design

Graphic All Design has a header navigation that brings out a background with rounded corners on links when hovered.
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First Baptist Oviedo

The header menu of this website glows on hover and gives out a great looking drop down.
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Candes

Candes has a text menu in cursive style.
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Keith Homemade Cakes

Food websites use red to stimulate the interest of the viewers and this website, employs the color to its advantage in a personal, cursive, and friendly navigation design.
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Ferocious Quarterly

The big and laid back design of this website’s menu tend to invite the readers to hover and visit the links.
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Andrey Fedorenko

Andrey Fedorenko’s main navigation is made of icons with great animation effect.
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Billy Tamplin

Billy Tamplin has menu with a triangular pointer effect on hover.
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Facio Design

Facio Design has a nice horizontal ribbon on its header navigation. It exudes a friendly, clean and professional design that speaks well of the quality of service of the design company.
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Go Mammoth

Go Mammoth has a navigation menu that looks like a hand painted signage against a semi-grunge concrete texture background.
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Two24 Studios

Two24 Studios uses bright colors that stand out against the grungy concrete texture in its background.
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Biola University Undergrad

Biola has an eye candy for a top horizontal menu that you can see when your cursor is on top of the links.
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Catered by Kate

Catered by Kate’s menu is a great example of nice and clear implementation of paper textured header navigation.
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Gene’s Sausage Shop

The left sidebar navigation menu of this website is really a knock out. It’s handwritten feel is complemented by the wood background texture.
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Coastal Cupboard

Red attracts attention and it also makes people excited, energetic, and hungry. This color is effectively used by Coastal Cupboard in its clean and simple navigation design.
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Bern Unlimited

This website has a nice tabbed navigation that sticks out of the cardboard texture on its header.
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Archibald Studio

Archibald Studio has a clean and minimalist design and its navigation menu looks great in small, unimposing, serif font.
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Bully Entertainment

Bully Entertainment has an awesome hand drawn feel and it is clearly shown by the doodly icons with slight animation effect in its menu.
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