Guidelines

The Navigation Sidebar consists of a main menu and sub menus. Most main menu items are practically folders, and their contents are displayed in sub menus.

Structure of the Sidebar

Main Menu

Primary Product Navigation

Products that fit under the Emarsys narrative (i.e. what Emarsys is capable of, and how it's ideally used), categorized by activity type:

1. Featured: opens a sub menu that contains featured products. The content of this sub menu isn't permanent, and can change depending on what we want to highlight for our users (e.g. new products).
2. Product categories: these items open sub menus that contain products in the selected category. Product categories reflect the narrative of Emarsys:
   1. Analytics: gain performance insights.
   2. Automation: boost efficiency by creating workflows.
   3. Content: turn data into assets that can be used in marketing.
   4. Channels: help reaching the audience.
   5. Contacts: improve targeting.
   6. Management: optimize data (this is basically Data Management).
3. Add-ons: expand the capabilities of Emarsys.

Platform Features

Important platform-wide features that should be available from any page.

1. Help: opens the contextual help panel.
2. Notifications: opens the Notification Center panel.
3. Search: opens the search panel.

Other Navigation

Logo: clicking the logo takes the user to the start page, which can be set by the user in "My Profile". By default, this is Emarsys Home.
Under the logo, for most users there's a static text label that displays which business vertical the customer account belongs to (e.g. e-Commerce). This is for branding purposes.

Profile: opens the profile sub menu. Contains pages that deal with user settings (e.g. My Profile, logging out), customer account settings (User Management, Security Settings), and other pages and functions which don't fit under the primary product navigation (e.g. Product Pioneer, Share this Page).

Sub Menus

Sub menus contain groups and sub menu items. Use groups to organize sub menu items by topic (e.g. Strategic Analytics and Email Analytics under Analytics) or by product (e.g. Predict under Content, and Loyalty under Add-ons)

Sub menus can also contain Upgrade accordions, which display available add-ons and package upgrades for the customer account.

Adding New Menu Items

Since the main menu items are mostly fixed (partly because the Emarsys narrative dictates them, and partly because of the limited space), new products should be added to one of the sub menus accessible via existing main menu items.

1. Check whether the product concept fits under any of the existing product categories. If not, it should most likely go in the Profile sub menu.
2. Take a look at existing sub menu groups, and try finding one where your product could make sense. If there's no group where the product would fit, create a new group, or put it in "Other".
3. If your product comes with many sub menu items, creating a separate sub menu group for them could help with the organization.
4. It's recommended to add as few sub menu items for your product as possible, to keep the Navigation Sidebar easy to use.

Management vs Settings

The "Management" main menu should contain items that are related to data management. Product-specific options should go under the specific product category, in a "Settings" group.

Data management means making sure the underlying data that products use are in good form. Menu items under this category are usually used by the IT, not marketers.

Naming Items and Groups

It's recommended to be as specific as possible with menu item naming, so they depend less on the group name and the panel title. E.g. instead of "Dashboard", we use "Main Dashboard" and "Strategic Dashboard".

For group names, in general it's recommended to avoid only using "fantasy product names" to make the menu more comprehendible even for users who are not familiar with the Emarsys product lineup. E.g. instead of having a "Smart Insight" group, we put the SI products under "Strategic Analytics", which is a good description of what the product does.