Mobile pages tend to require more scrolling, have less content visible above the fold, and sometimes be slower to load, so people may resort to using a menu instead of looking on the page and exploring whether there is any content that matches their interest. On the desktop, page-load speeds are high and the larger screen offers a better preview of the content of the page. (In other words, the interaction cost of accessing a desired piece of information is higher on mobile than on the desktop.)
Why Hidden Navigation Is Less Effective Why does hidden navigation have these effects? Throughout the article, we hinted at several answers: Low salience: A small icon is harder to notice on a large screen size (and even on a smaller mobile one). Low information scent: The menu icon or label doesn’t usually tell people what’s inside it, so they have no idea if they’ll find what they need by clicking on it. Extra work: To figure out what’s inside the menu, people must expand it. That increases the interaction cost for users and makes them less likely to do it, or, if they do it, they may take longer. Lack of standards: Hidden navigation is implemented in different ways by different sites. Some sites use it, some don’t. On mobile, patterns are starting to form, but on desktop there is a lot of variability and inconsistency in the placement and the labeling of hidden navigation. Low familiarity: Especially on desktops, hiding navigation is not a common pattern and people may not expect to find global navigation under an expandable menu. Some people may also still be unfamiliar with the hamburger icon that is frequently used for such menus. This low familiarity is exacerbated by the lack of standards which reduce long-term learnability (as further discussed in our course on The Human Mind and Usability, learning is facilitated by repeated exposure to the same pattern.)