A good designer doesn’t make significant mistakes in the website or applications, especially with the Drop downs. However, apps and websites consist of factors which affect the user experience on a large scale. These factors not only affect the generic outlook of the website but also has an adverse effect on user experience.

Users get frustrated when they don’t see a structure in what they go through, the uniformity and the ease to access is what users expect in the experience front. Owing to it, there are three major factors which affect the user experience when it comes to website drop down menus.

Too much of dropdowns

In every website/application you’ve ever visited, you would have come across a menu bar which drops down with a number of options provided in it. This was mainly implemented to bring a structure and minimize the space occupied. 

However, stacking up the drop down menu at various places might look good but doesn’t provide the best user experience. So the dropdowns should be precise and easily navigable like seen in http://wildtigerfoundation.com

The flaw in date picking dropdown

These days, picking dates happens to be a herculean task in a traditional drop down menu box. In order to overcome this, the websites should be designed in a way where the dates can be manually entered with a triggered number pad. This is a faster way and can be executed with the most minimal of effort.

Still, many websites in India like banking, ticket booking, government websites have a bad user experience in date picking drop downs. Certain websites have improved the usability according to their business and target audience like the image show below from https://emicalculator.net 

No “search” function

A normal website/application generally consists of a drop down menu. But in case of Huge Websites like hospitals, educational institutions like universities, corporates or industries have a large variety of information. They had a lot of sub categories, divisions which would be hard to bring in a dropdown menu as it may consist of a number of options ranging from fifty to even hundred options. It might become hard for a user to scroll down all of it.

So its good to have a search bar in huge websites like web directories which will enhance the user experience. Users will get the information they need easily without any difficulties in the example shown above from https://infomediasearch.com