Mega Menu WordPress Plugins

Mega menus are some of the most interesting types of WordPress navigation. They’re often colorful and filled with images that catch the eye. They’re also designed to highlight content and help visitors find the content that interests them the most. Fortunately, it’s easy to add a mega menu to any WordPress website. In this post, we’ll look at the best mega menu WordPress plugins to help you decide which is best for your needs.

First, what is a mega menu? A mega menu is a type of dropdown WordPress menu that shows larger portions of content than standard WordPress menus with links. Mega menus can include multiple columns with widgets, images, icons, links, tabs, sliders, products, and more.

We often see them on large popular websites. They often include contact forms, maps to a store’s physical location, product images with buttons to buy or see more information, and excerpts of the latest blog posts with thumbnails of featured images.

They can reveal multiple layers as the user hovers or clicks the mega menu elements. This allows for a more complex menu that can provide lots of information in a way that’s easy to use and looks great. Mega menus are especially popular for eCommerce and online magazines.

Are Mega Menus Good for the User Experience?

If they’re designed well, mega menus improve the user experience. They make navigating the content more visual. Even though they’re often complex, they present content in a simple structure that’s well-organized and easy to use.

If they’re not designed well, the content can confuse the users and result in a higher bounce rate and lower conversions.

So, yes, they can be great for improved UX, but only if they’re designed with usability in mind.

Are Mega Menus Good for SEO?

If the mega menu is designed carefully, it can improve SEO. You can include links and keywords to help boost SEO.

Likewise, if used incorrectly it can reduce SEO. Too many keywords can have a negative impact on SEO because it can be seen as keyword stuffing, which is a violation of Google’s keyword guidelines.

So, it goes back to design. Mega menus can be good for SEO if they’re designed well.

Designing a Mega Menu

As we’ve seen from the last two questions, a mega menu can work for or against your website. It comes down to good design. The mega menu should be used to enhance the design and functionality of the website’s navigation.

With this in mind, keep the menu structure simple and easy to understand. Don’t use every category, subcategory, and tag. Avoid extremely long dropdown menus. Show the most important categories or those you want to highlight. Don’t use large images or elements. Find the size that looks and feels right.

Look at the mega menus on your favorite shopping sites to see what you like and don’t like. Use these design queues to help you design your own mega menu that’s tailored to your website.

Most mega menu plugins help you build a well-designed mega menu. Most build the menu automatically based on your WordPress menu. Several plugins include pre-made layouts to get you started on a well-designed mega menu that’s structured with the user in mind.

Building a Mega Menu Manually vs Mega Menu WordPress Plugins

WordPress does not include a mega menu option by default. It is possible to build a mega menu using full site editing with WordPress blocks and code to make it work. This works, but it’s not a good solution for most WordPress users. For now, mega menu WordPress plugins are a better solution.

For this list, I chose the mega menu plugins with the best ratings and features. As always, I’ve only included plugins with recent updates with good recent reviews. I didn’t include the mega menu plugins that are add-ons to specific WordPress themes. Instead, I’ve only included those that work with any theme. Although, some do include features for certain themes. The plugins are in no particular order.

1. Max Mega Menu

Max Mega Menu automatically creates a mega menu from your existing WordPress menu. Control how the mega menu works in the settings. Style your mega menu with the theme editor. It supports multiple menu locations with separate configurations for each one. Place your menu off-canvas to slide in from the right or left or set it as a standard dropdown menu. It can also create a slide-out menu. The submenu content can be organized into rows and columns using the grid layout builder.

The mega menus can display widgets and icons. Open the menu with hover, hover intent, or click events. Menus can fade, fade up, slide, or slide up. Options include hiding the text, disabling links, hiding on mobile, and more. For mobile, it automatically supports touch events. It includes an off-canvas mobile menu. You can hide the submenus, choose how the links work, and design the toggle bar elements with the mobile toggle bar designer. Pro features add tabbed mega menus, sticky menus, vertical and accordion menus, a search box, WooCommerce support, a menu logo, custom styling, and lots more.

2. WordPress Mega Menu – QuadMenu

QuadMenu uses drag-and-drop fields for mega menus, tabs in menus, and carousel menus. Add or remove fields to create the layouts you want. It includes automatic and manual menu integration and supports multiple menu locations and widgets. Display horizontal or vertical mega menus, off-canvas menus, and sticky menus. It also includes an icons menu, a search menu, and a cart menu. Show or hide items based on the screen size and create unlimited menu themes.

It has lots of filters that let you change the style and behavior of the menu. It’s built on the standard WordPress menu system. Use clicks or hover to open the mega menus. Dropdown menus can float, and you can customize the breakpoints for the menu collapse. It supports Font Awesome, Google Fonts, dropdown animations, and more. A pro version is available that adds a tab menu, login, register, social media, and a carousel menu.

3. Groovy Menu Plugin

Groovy Menu Plugin is a responsive mega menu that’s easy to use. Create horizontal or vertical menus, a one-page menu, a dropdown menu, a submenu, a toolbar menu, an AJAX cart, and more. Mega menus can be full-width, mobile, and multi-level. Use a different logo for desktop and mobile. It has two hover types, supports smooth scrolling, and supports a few of the major theme builders.

The pro version adds mega menu blocks that add rich content. It also supports more theme builders and adds lots of header layouts, a vertical menu, an icon menu, a sticky menu, a hamburger menu, a sidebar menu, an off-canvas menu, and more. You can also use custom badges, set user roles, and set menus for specific taxonomies.

4. UberMenu

UberMenu is a premium mega menu WordPress plugin that creates multiple types of mega menus. Add flyouts, images, tabs, rich content, icons, forms, maps, widgets, dynamic content, WooCommerce products, badges, and more. It includes 50 settings to create custom skins. You can also use the premade skins. Build submenu content automatically from posts and terms. It includes the 100 most essential Font Awesome icons.

Triggers include hover, hover intent, and click. The triggers can be overridden for each menu item. It includes enhanced UI settings that control the design with toggles. It also includes lots of advanced settings and integrations including a scroll-to-section function, filters, min and max results, PHP and JavaScript APIs, and lots more.

5. WordPress Gutenberg Blocks

WordPress Gutenberg Blocks adds over 85 premade blocks and over 300 templates to Gutenberg. Among them is a premade mega menu. Display horizontal, vertical, or vertical toggle mega menus using its mega menu builder. It can display expandable sections of menus with rich media content such as WooCommerce products. Choose how the submenus open, how they transition, and how they’re aligned. You can also make it responsive on mobile devices. Styling works the same way as all Gutenberg blocks.

6. My Theme Shop WP Mega Menu

My Theme Shop WP Mega Menu is a premium plugin to create custom mega menus and boost SEO and user experience. It loads with AJAX and has built-in pagination. Use your own backgrounds, choose from unlimited colors, show featured images and thumbnails, display icons, choose the menu type, and more. The menu types include posts, posts, and subcategories, or just subcategories.

It includes lots of theme customizer settings to create the exact design you want. Animation controls include animate in and animate out. Display widgets, WooCommerce products, tabs, and more. It’s responsive, so it works great for any device.

7. Superfly Responsive Menu

Superfly Responsive Menu is an advanced menu builder with mega menu features. It displays the menu vertically with lots of submenu options. Display a slide-in, static, compact icon navbar, skewed panel, or full screen. Add custom content with the rich text editor. Toggle the menu with any element such as a button, link, image, and more.

Add images, rows, chapters, icons, separators, etc., and style the font colors, background image, logo, or any other element. Menus can be grouped into logical sections and styled together. You also have control of the menu’s behavior such as pushing content, opening on hover, or opening on click. It also includes a social bar with all the social icons.

8. Mega Main Menu

Mega Main Menu is a premium menu builder with lots of extras. It includes a sticky menu, dropdowns, icons, a logo, and a search. The 10 dropdowns create lots of mega menu designs and include text, images, widgets, and shortcodes. Design options include unlimited colors, animations, 3 alignment options, corner rounding, 600 Google Fonts, and 1600 vector icons. The menus can open vertically or horizontally.

9. Hero Mega Menu

Hero Mega Menu is a premium drag-and-drop mega menu plugin with lots of features including WooCommerce compatibility. Drag and drop any element as a menu or submenu item and customize them individually. Build a sticky menu, choose from 3 different hover styles, add hover effects with color, and use background images and gradients.

You can build an eyebrow menu, a search menu with 3 fields to choose from, and add dividers. You can choose any column layout and add elements such as maps, forms, posts, text, lists, and images. It comes with hundreds of hand-crafted icons. The drag-and-drop builder is intuitive, and the results are elegant.

10. Responsive Menu

Responsive Menu is primarily a mobile menu builder. However, it does have options to create a mega menu. The submenu items are built with WordPress pages and then added to the mega menu. Build the pages with any WordPress blocks. Choose from a hamburger icon or text, change the toggle button color once the user logs in, change the font sizes and background colors, and choose the menu animations. It includes 150 customizable options.

11. Cool Responsive Megamenu

Cool Responsive Megamenu uses the WordPress 3 menu system to create highly customizable mega menus. Display multiple columns with widgets, WooCommerce products, images, galleries, recent posts, and more. Style it to match your website.

12. SideMenu

SideMenu adds a new responsive sidebar and menu location to your WordPress website. Mega menus are not the main focus, but it does include a mega menu dropdown feature. The sidebar can add any menu to your website and is opened and closed by clicking a button. It’s limited to the most recent themes from WordPress and several popular themes.

That’s our look at mega menu WordPress plugins. Mega menus are great for highlighting content in the navigation structure and making the content easy to access. Adding a mega menu is easy with any of the plugins we covered here. Regardless of the mega menu plugin you choose, good design is the key to a high-quality mega menu.

In conclusion, while utilizing top-notch mega menu plugins can significantly enhance your WordPress website's navigation and user experience, it's important to remember that a strong foundation is key to success. Choosing reliable and high-performance WordPress hosting services will ensure that your site runs smoothly and efficiently, ultimately contributing to the overall effectiveness and prosperity of your online presence.

We want to hear from you. Have you tried any of these mega menu WordPress plugins? Let us know what you think about them in the comments.