The Design Approach Behind the Unique Mobile Menu on Streamline

You'll notice that Streamline has taken some different approaches to certain design elements, including its thumb-oriented menu. With mobile approaching 80% of ecommerce traffic, we've designed the theme to be experienced first and foremost through a mobile device, all while scaling its ideas up to a traditional desktop experience.

Traditionally, mobile stores adopted a somewhat-cryptic "hamburger" or 3-line icon menu that conceals your menu items until a customer decides to tap on it (if they do). On desktop, on the other hand, all your menu items are in view and customers can understand your offering at a glimpse. This trade-off, while not ideal, is made due to the smaller screen size mobile devices offer and has become relatively widely accepted.

The issue in recent years is that the devices that this idea was originally designed for have become substantially taller, pushing the icon out of reach and requiring customers to use two hands to browse your offering.

This lead us to ask ourselves: why force casual shoppers to make a decision about whether or not browsing your categories is worth putting their drink down and taking out an extra hand for? Knowing what products you offer should be a dead simple low-friction event, especially for customers dropping into your store from an advertisement you convinced them to pull precious seconds away from scrolling their social feed for.

For this reason Streamline is designed around easy thumb accessibility. While the trade-off is that the bottom of your screen now has an element overlaid on it, the screen real estate is roughly the same as the top menu that traditional stores would offer — plus it's more inviting and easier to browse in and out of your categories.

While we recognize that this is a non-traditional approach, we set out to do something unique and different that appeals to a very specific type of customer looking to offer an amazing experience to their mobile visitors. Rest assured your customers will understand and appreciate your decision to use this menu type.