Guidelines

Navigation Sidebar

Main menu items are categories, and their contents are displayed as sub menus.

The main menu items reflect our product narrative, that is the primary capabilities of Emarsys:

1. Analytics: gain insights about marketing performance.
2. Automation: make marketing smarter with automated workflows.
3. Content: create assets to be used in marketing.
4. Channels: reach the audience via channels.
5. Contacts: manage audience.
6. Management: optimize data (Data Management).

Beyond these categories, there's Featured to highlight important products and new releases, and Add-ons for expansions.

Using separators and labels, sub menu items can be grouped by topic (e.g. Strategic Analytics and Email Analytics under Analytics) or by product (e.g. Predict under Content, and Loyalty under Add-ons).

Shell Bar

The Shell Bar contains platform-wide features that should be available on every screen.

• Logo: navigates to the start page, which can be changed in "My Profile".
• Share Feedback: opens feedback dialog.
• Search: opens the search panel.
• Help: opens the contextual help panel.
• Notifications: opens the Notification Center.
• Profile: opens the Profile Menu, which contains pages for user settings, customer account settings, and other items that aren't part of the Emarsys product narrative.

The Shell Bar can contain further navigation elements, such as the Account Switcher and Account Warning labels.

Best Practices

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 under existing main menus, or the Profile Menu.

1. Check whether the product concept fits under any of the existing product categories. If not, it should most likely go in the Profile 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 settings should go under the product's sub menu, in a "Settings" group.

Data management means making sure the underlying data used by Emarsys is 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 context around them. E.g. instead of "Dashboard", we use "Main Dashboard" and "Strategic Dashboard".

For group names, avoid using "fantasy product names", so the menu remains understandable for users 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.