03 — Menus & Navigation
How to set up the menus visitors use to get around your store.
Where menus are managed
Go to Appearance → Menus. This is standard WordPress menu management — create a menu, add pages/products/categories/custom links to it, then assign it to one of the menu locations below.
The menu locations
| Location | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Primary Navigation | Your main header navigation. This is the one most stores need to set up. |
| Mobile Menu (optional override) | Only needed if you want phone/tablet visitors to see a different menu than desktop visitors. If you leave this unassigned, mobile visitors automatically see the Primary Navigation menu instead — most stores can safely skip this. |
| Footer Column 1 / 2 / 3 | Up to three separate link columns in your footer (e.g. "Shop," "Help," "Company"). |
Desktop menu style: Flyout vs. Mega Menu
In Appearance → Customize → Header & Navigation, you can choose how your Primary Navigation menu looks on desktop:
- Flyout — a simple, compact dropdown when hovering over a menu item.
- Mega Menu — a full-width panel that can show product category images alongside your links — a richer, more visual browsing experience.
You can also tell the mega menu which product categories to include or exclude from the automatic category display, from the same Customizer panel.
Mobile menu
On phones and tablets, visitors get a simplified "drill-down" style menu — tapping a menu item with sub-items slides into that submenu, with a back button to return. This works automatically; no extra setup needed beyond assigning your Primary Navigation menu (and optionally a separate Mobile Menu, as above).
If JavaScript is turned off
A small number of visitors browse with JavaScript disabled (rare, but it happens — accessibility tools, corporate security policies, etc.). For them, a simplified fallback navigation bar automatically appears instead, so your site is never left with no navigation at all. You don't need to configure anything for this — it's automatic.
Troubleshooting
- My mobile menu shows the wrong items. Check whether something is assigned to the "Mobile Menu (optional override)" location under Appearance → Menus. If a menu is assigned there — even an empty one — it will be used instead of your Primary Navigation menu.
- The mega menu isn't showing category images. Make sure "Mega Menu" is selected under Customize → Header & Navigation, and that the categories you expect aren't excluded in the same panel's category settings.
- A menu item I deleted still shows up. Menus in WordPress are saved separately from your pages — if you delete a page, remove the matching menu item manually from Appearance → Menus as well.