165 design references

Bucks Sauce · oversized shop navigation

Reel by Andrew Chornyy

Keep the product in view, make the menu a few huge words, and put a picture of the destination in the row.

Visit website · Bucks Sauce

What to look at

The address bar reads buckssauce.com/shop/smoked-peach-chipotle. A brown bottle stays on the left the whole time, on an orange field with peaches and dried peppers. On the right, blue blocks spell SMOKED PEACH CHIPOTLE over a line about turning pretty good into holy shit, then taste notes and Add to cart at $12.00. A cream menu covers that panel. Five words stack in it: SHOP, WHOLESALE, ABOUT, STORES, CONTACT. The word under the pointer turns to an outline, and a small photo sits in that row. A top banner reads "BUILD YOUR OWN 3-PACK & SAVE $4 BUCKS." Andrew's card says "This sauce site is wow."

The bottle stays on the left while WHOLESALE turns to an outline and a small photo sits in that row. The flavor notes and Add to cart are covered.
The bottle stays on the left while WHOLESALE turns to an outline and a small photo sits in that row. The flavor notes and Add to cart are covered.

Why it works

The bottle never leaves, so the menu does not replace the product. The five words are huge, and Nielsen Norman Group, on Fitts's law, says "bigger targets are better": a larger target is faster to reach. The small photo is information scent. The same group says the image next to a link should describe the page or the category it stands for, or it adds nothing. Hover is the only cue that a row is active, and a hover change does not show for someone without a mouse. Andrew calls this a perfect example of making a hard niche interesting. That is his claim.

Try it

  1. Leave the product in view when the menu opens. Do not cover the bottle.
  2. Use a few large words as the menu, and make the whole word the target.
  3. Put a picture of that destination in the row, and choose a picture that shows the page, not a generic texture.
  4. Give the row a state a finger can see. An outline that appears only on hover will not show on a phone.
  5. Keep Add to cart reachable while the menu is open. In this reel the menu covers it.

What it costs

The menu covers the flavor notes and Add to cart until it is closed, so the sale is one extra step away. Five giant words are the wrong tool if the shop has dozens of departments. A hover outline never appears for a thumb. The live shop could not be opened on 2026-11-13, so this is a lesson from the reel, not from a page confirmed today.

Words worth knowing

Sources