A good small business menu has five to seven top-level items labelled in the words customers use, one level of dropdown at most, a standout button for the main action, and everything occasional moved to the footer. The menu on most small business websites grows the same way. Someone asks for a page, it gets added to the top bar, and five years later there are eleven items, three dropdowns, and a label called “Resources” that nobody has clicked since 2021.
A good menu does one job: it gets a visitor to the page they came for in one tap.
Use the words your customers use
The label should be what a customer would type into Google, not what you call it internally.
A physio calls it “Musculoskeletal assessment”. The patient is looking for “Back pain”. An accountant offers “Business advisory”. The client wants “Tax returns for sole traders”. When there’s a gap between your language and theirs, people hesitate, and hesitation on a phone usually means the back button.
A useful test: look at the search queries in Google Search Console (we set it up as part of our SEO work), or just think about the last ten phone calls you got. What words did people use? Those are your labels.
Keep the top level to a handful
Five to seven items is plenty for most small businesses. On a phone the whole menu sits behind a single icon anyway, and a long list means more scrolling before people find what they want.
Usually that looks like:
- Services (or the name of your main service)
- About
- Work, Projects or Gallery (if you have something to show)
- Prices (if you can publish them)
- Contact
Plus a button for the main action: “Book now”, “Get a quote” or a phone number. That button should look different from the other items so it stands out.
Avoid clever labels
“Our Story”, “Discover”, “Explore”, “The Experience”, “What We Do”. They sound nice in a brand workshop. In a menu they make people guess. “About” and “Services” are boring, and boring is what you want in navigation. Save the personality for the page content.
The same goes for one-word labels that could mean anything. “Solutions” tells a visitor nothing. “Solar installation” tells them everything.
Dropdowns: one level, and only when needed
If you have several services, a dropdown under “Services” is fine. Keep it to one level. Dropdowns inside dropdowns are fiddly with a mouse and close to impossible on a phone.
If a dropdown has more than about eight items, the problem isn’t the menu. It’s that you need a proper Services overview page that groups them, with the dropdown linking to the groups.
And make the parent item a real link. If “Services” only opens a dropdown and doesn’t go anywhere when clicked, some people will tap it and assume the site is broken.
Let the footer carry the rest
Not every page needs to be in the main menu. The footer is where people look for the things they need occasionally: privacy policy, terms, careers, FAQs, a full list of service areas, your ABN and licence number, social links.
Moving these out of the header doesn’t hide them. It just stops them competing with the pages most visitors want.
Before and after
Three menus based on patterns we see constantly:
A plumber
Before: Home | About Us | Our Services ▾ | Residential ▾ | Commercial ▾ | Gallery | Testimonials | Blog | FAQ | Contact
After: Blocked drains | Hot water | All services ▾ | About | Contact | Call now
The two jobs that bring in most calls go straight in the menu. “Home” goes, because the logo already does that. Testimonials move onto the service pages where they help someone decide.
A psychology practice
Before: Welcome | Our Philosophy | Meet the Team | Modalities ▾ | Fees & Rebates | Resources | Contact
After: How we help ▾ | Our psychologists | Fees and Medicare rebates | Contact | Book an appointment
“Modalities” becomes “How we help”, with the dropdown listing what people come in for (anxiety, relationships, workplace stress) rather than therapy names. The booking button is the main action. Health practices should also keep an eye on how services are described, and not just in the menu. Our guide to AHPRA advertising rules for health websites covers that.
A cafe
Before: Home | Our Story | The Experience | Eat | Drink | Functions | Gallery | Shop | Contact
After: Menu | Functions | Find us | Shop
Four items. People visiting a cafe website want the menu, the opening hours and where to park. Opening hours go in the header or the top of every page so nobody has to look for them.
A quick menu audit
Open your site on your phone, tap the menu, and ask:
- Is anything here using a word a customer wouldn’t use?
- Could any two items be combined?
- Is there anything here that fewer than one in fifty visitors would want? Move it to the footer.
- Is the main action (call, book, quote) visible without opening the menu?
- Does every item go somewhere when tapped?
If your menu is cluttered because the site has grown in every direction, that’s sometimes a sign the structure needs a rethink, and our guide to refresh versus rebuild can help you decide. If you’re running ads, remember the menu matters less there: ad traffic should usually go to a dedicated landing page rather than the homepage.
Menu structure is one of the first things we sort out in any website build. On an existing site, run the five audit questions first, then ask us if you’d like a trimmed-down menu to compare yours against.