A website is a set of pages, and visitors have to be able to find their way among them. Navigation and menus are how. This piece is about website navigation and menus in Odoo.
What navigation is
Website navigation is how visitors find their way around a website: how they get from one page to another, how they find what they are looking for. Menus are the central part of navigation: the structured set of links that lets a visitor see what the website contains and go to the parts they want. Navigation and menus are, in essence, the structure that makes a website's pages a navigable whole rather than a set of disconnected pages.
Why navigation matters
Navigation matters because a website only works if visitors can find what they need. A website can have well-built, purposeful pages, but if a visitor cannot find their way to the page they need, the page might as well not exist. Good navigation means a visitor can understand what the website offers and get to the part they want, easily. Poor navigation means a visitor gets lost or frustrated and leaves. Navigation is what makes a website genuinely usable, and so it is as important as the pages themselves.
Handling navigation and menus in Odoo
In Odoo, the website's navigation and menus are configured: the menus, the structure of links, are set up to organise how visitors move around the site. Building a website includes setting up the navigation, so the pages are organised into a structure visitors can use, and the menus give visitors the way to see and reach the parts of the site.
Designing navigation well: clarity and simplicity
Designing website navigation well comes down to clarity and simplicity. The navigation should be clear: a visitor should be able to understand, from the menus, what the website offers and where to go, with the menu items genuinely meaningful and the structure genuinely making sense. And it should be simple: navigation that is overcomplicated, too many menu items, too deep a structure, is hard for a visitor to use; navigation that is clear and as simple as the site genuinely allows is easy. The aim is navigation a visitor can grasp and use without effort, which means clear, meaningful menus and a sensible, not overcomplicated, structure.
Navigation reflects the site's structure
Good navigation reflects a sensible structure of the website itself. A website should be organised sensibly, its pages grouped and structured in a way that makes sense, and the navigation should reflect that genuine structure. Navigation and the structure of the site go together: a sensibly structured website, with navigation that reflects that structure clearly, is a website a visitor can navigate. So designing navigation well is partly designing a sensible structure for the website and then making the menus reflect it clearly.
The takeaway
Website navigation and menus in Odoo structure how visitors find their way around a website. Navigation matters because a website only works if visitors can find what they need; good navigation makes a website genuinely usable. In Odoo, the navigation and menus are configured to organise the site's pages into a usable structure. Design navigation for clarity and simplicity, clear, meaningful menus and a sensible, not overcomplicated, structure, reflecting a genuine, sensible structure of the website itself. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.