Menus are an important part of navigation and the overall user experience of your visitors. Think of menus, as discovery opportunities - a great menu allows visitors to easily find the products that they're looking for and stay on your website for extended periods of time. Out of the box, Magento doesn't offer that many options for making your website menus more user-friendly. That's also true for many of the themes that are available out there. Being able to control the content, usability and design of your menus is very important for conversion optimization. 

This post will highlight some of the more popular and diverse Magento custom menu extensions that have been 'battle-tested' by thousands of Magento users. While some people argue that mega menus are awful for website navigation - we decided to include these products in the list too. First of all, mega menus are pretty much a standard for online stores with tons of categories and products, since there aren't that many other options to display all of categories and products at once. Secondly, today's users are very familiar with mega menus, because top brands, like Columbia, use them. It's not something the users have to accustom themselves to. 

Responsive Custom Menu

This is one of the fullest Magento custom menu solutions out there, with tons of great features and customization options. What we really like about this product and its developers is the fact that they go the extra mile to test and show you the functionality of the extension. The documentation available on the website is pretty detailed and informative. They also show you the actual tests of the extension in different environments, as proof of its functionality. Some of the features of this extension include:

Static blocks within the menu

Touchscreen support

Supports majority of desktop and mobile browsers

Advanced menu column customization

Easy Menu Builder

Plugin Company is one of the most experienced Magento extension providers. This experience transforms into simple and easy-to-use products. Their custom menu solution exhibits a ton of useful properties that make menu creation easy, simple and doable, even for non-techies. In this regard it's a bit more manageable for store managers, marketing personnel that are not experienced with development.  

Drag & drop builder

Automatic URL rewrites

Easy roll backs to previous versions

Easy display management (pick where to show the menu)

Mega Menu by MageStore

This is probably one of the best solutions on the list in terms of UI diversity options. It offers a variety of visual options for the menus, with or without mega menu: cascading menus, etc. This also includes a number of triggering and transition options. Some of the more prominent features of this Magento custom menu: 

8 great menu templates

Exceptionally optimized for better and faster responsiveness

Flexible selection of setting for mobile usability (choose breakpoints, etc.)

Dynamic product listings

Menu Creator Pro

Another great custom menu for your Magento store, which has a lot of visualization options for the front end. It also has some useful tools for developers that can help create menus faster and with greater efficiency, like the developer mode that allows you to add HTML code directly to front end and then save the changes on the spot. Other great features include:

Customer group permissions (decide which users see what parts of the menu)

Creative visualizations (like Metro menu, etc.)

Unlimited menu groups

Compatible with practically any Magento theme

Navigation Menu Pro

Another solid product in this list. It  includes most of the features that the more expensive extensions exhibit. It has a very simple and handy interface that allows you to easily edit the appearance of your menus through your back end. Great bang for your buck. 

Handy installation documentation

Multi store support

Up to 5 menu levels

Flexible Menu by Amasty

This is a simple and very reliable custom menu solution for Magento that incorporates some of the basic and most important features. It uses the standard Magento menu system, so it's easy to setup and maintain. At the same time, it's a tad bit more pricey for the available functionality. But if you're looking for a simple and clean custom menu solution for your small/medium store - this is the right solution for you. Plus, Amasty provides great support, so you can always ask for their help. 

Great compatibility with most Magento themes

Easy and intuitive setup

Great customer support

Fooman Flexible Navigation

Another simple and very effective Magento custom menu solution that has all of the basic features and options. Great usability for people with limited knowledge of Magento and its infrastructure. Again, a tad bit over the price tag that we would assign for it, but at the same time, it has some great features that other solutions in this list don't have: 

Integration with AheadWork's Blog extension

Compatible with the actual Magento category tree

Fully cached for maximum performance

MageWorld's Mega Menu

Another great product with tons of useful functionality, like multi-language support, HTML/CSS validation and much more. Adequately priced, with great support and timely updates. 

Extremely admin-friendly

Very responsive menu effects

Very detailed and graphical user guide

These extensions represent the core of Magento custom menu options, currently available at Magento Connect. There are many other similar extensions, but they are less popular and more or less have the same functionality. If you think that there's a superb extension that we missed in this category - let us know in the comments below.