Based on data of the top trafficed ecommerce websites, 55% of site have the hamburger menu in the top left hand corner. We advocate the left to create consistency. While most sites put it on the left, 2 out of 3 people use their phone with their right hand.
My girlfriend is left-handed.
Well, she’s ambidextrous. But that was a survival response, not a choice.
She is left-handed, but uses her phone with her right.
I found this really peculiar and asked why she did it. Her response was that it’s because the world is made for right handed people.
Should Hamburger Menu be on Left or Right
Recently I was working on the rebuild of the mobile website for one of our clients and the hamburger menu was put on the left and not the right by our designer.
This got me thinking about how people use mobiles.
Where do they expect the hamburger menu to be?
Should there be consistency where the menu is placed?
Is there consistency in mobile menu left or right?
I started doing research and found a UX blog post that shared data on how people use and hold their mobiles.
On section struck me.
1 in 3 use their left hand to navigate on mobile and 2 in 3 use their right hand.
But only 1 in 10 people are left handed.
Than why do so many people use their non dominant hand to navigate the web?
Were more websites designed for left handed navigation?
To explore this idea I sampled 49 popular sites and some sites I use regularly to build a spreadsheet that showed whether the site had left-handed or right-handed navigation hamburger navigation.
Here’s a link to the list.
I did not expect the findings.
These were some of the of the biggest sites in the world, and the economist in me thought that to optimize utility right hamburger menus would be more common.
Instead I found that 54% were left handed.
Maybe it’s that most designers are left-handed or there is no rhyme or reason.
The conclusion for my self is that because more people use their mobiles with their right hands, the hamburger menu should be on the top right.
Where is the hamburger menu button?
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Are hamburger menus bad?
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What does the hamburger icon mean?
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