🔫 Bulletproof Coffee’s orange headings provide a pleasing pop of color that makes it easier to scan sub-links

📚 B&N adds a simple colored underline that adds visual appeal

🍷 Drizly uses a red stripe to the left of 3rd-level sub-categories to make them easier to identify as sub-links

🕊️ Free People uses vertical pipes to distinguish different sections (Shop, Brand features, Articles + Advice)

🥜 Nuts.com uses vertical pipe and colored headers to add additional differentiation between sections (Categories and Shop By)

👓 EyeBuyDirect highlights Polarized Sunglasses as a Popular category

🔫 Bulletproof Coffee calls out new product types with a NEW flag

👚 Take advantage of desktop real estate with thumbnail images to add context to list items

⌚ D2C brands like MVMT with tightly scoped product catalogs and creatively named product lines can help customers shop by style right from the header flyout

🥛 BlackMilk highlights Shop By Feature links with fun emoji

🥛 Emoji menu, zoomed in…

🎽 Under Armour emphasizes its New & Featured link with a 🔥 hot emoji

💎 Ritani uses illustrated icons to add visual appeal and clarity to sections like Find Your Diamond and Shop By Shape

💎  Ritani, zoomed in…

👞 Ted Baker provides quick links within its Outlet menu to shop by size, by gender

👠 Famous Footwear includes links to Shop by Width as well as Shop by Size

👠 DSW allows users to skip Categories and shop all within the Department by size

👶🏽 Carter’s lets you shop by size for children’s clothing

❗Kohl’s styles sale, deals and clearance sections with red type to grab more attention

🧘‍♀️ Lululemon lets navigators browse by activity in a shaded runner along the bottom of the flyout — make sure to A/B test or use event tags to track engagement (this pattern may be easy for visitors to overlook)

🐱 Sanrio promotes featured products in each Category tab’s flyout menu. Some search-and-merchandising platforms allow you to auto-populate these slots with machine learning, or manually pin products to slots

😴 Nectar Sleep’s ‘Mattresses’ mega menu lets you tab through mattress models and compare variants head-to-head with attribute details

☘️ O’Reilly Auto Parts gives its Deals section its own flyout menu

👓 Glasses USA’s Sale menu features banners for various Sale sections

🐶 PetSmart offers a Shop by Brand menu, with the most famous brands featured with logo tiles, and a “Shop all Brands” link to all

🌈 Ruggable provides a stunning way to shop rugs by color family

👟 Brooks Running includes a Shoe Finder Quiz in its Mens mega menu

🔫 Bulletproof Coffee includes a Quiz CTA in the bottom strip (gray field)

🛏️ Helix calls out its mattress finder in the header nav, and in case you missed it, the jelly-bean CTA is repeated in its hero banner

🛀 Lush prompts shoppes to “Take the Hair Quiz” (far right banner) — product finders are a great way to collect first party info to better personalize customer experience

🦅 American Eagle Outfitters features Offers in its header menu and opens a drawer on-tap on both mobile and desktop (this may take a sec to load - see animation after this static shot)

📿 Puravida does similar

🥾 Columbia uses a similar tactic, but links from its promotional bar

Mobile version, with a different design:

Desktop version:

⚡ Add emphasis to thematic collections with thumbnail images

💍 Daniela Draper draws eyeballs to its Cinderella collection with an animated demo. (For web performance, it’s best to use a native looping .webm video vs an animated GIF)

👙 Another example from KNIX:

👕 Urban Outfitters slides a promo strip into select sub-menus, where promotions apply (black runner)

🎣 Free People evokes curiosity with the copy “I Tried It: I Replaced All My Pants With…”

Zoomed in… (if you’re curious, it links to a blog post)

👕 BooHooMan uses 2 graphic banners and a special widget for Offers alongside Category links

Zoom:

🧸 Melissa & Doug has a tight catalog with fewer links per Category flyout than average — more room for eye-catching hero banners and CTAs!

👟 Adidas uses a subtle nudge to evoke curiosity. You click, you get a CTA to join the Adiclub

🥾 As a Co-op, REI highlights its membership reward program

🐶 Petsmart is another example, promoting its loyalty proram

👖 Y/Project takes an avant garde approach to breadcrumb navigation, rolling it into a turnstile-style header menu that flips as you scroll. Any unconventional design pattern is risky — so make sure to user test or A/B test if you try this out

🍄 Four Sigmatic embeds attribute chips into its flyout menus for quick pre-filtering of results. It also helps customers understand the key benefits across the product range (GIF loading slow? Jump to the static shot for the gist 👇)

Mobile view

🔩 Lowe’s allows users to drill down to third level categories to shorten the purchase journey

🍷 Home pages, Categories, search results and PDPs can get looooong. Give users easy access to your header nav by making it sticky

👟 On uses a floating nav bar that contains everything from Shop to Cart

👗 Alexander McQueen replicates a magazine editorial with a full page menu takeover on desktop. Hovering over links swaps the hero image (GIF demo below, it may load slow)

💎 Bvlgari’s menu is also super fly

🍸 Skinny Mixes’ Account, Wishlist and Cart links are near invisible in its promo strip (which can cause what’s known as “banner blindness”)

Zoom:

💋 Kylie’s white text links disappear into its hero images

🛋️ Home Depot uses horizontal tabs for its second level of links. It’s very easy for users to overlook that there are 8 more sub-menus to explore under Home Decor, Furniture & Kitchenware

😬 While this is arguably (keyword: arguably) good for SEO, repeating keywords at the front-end of your list items makes it harder for users to scan