RULE: Expose Industries and Services as two orthogonal axes in the top nav. Don't hide one behind the other.
Rule: Multi-vertical service business sites expose both axes — Industries (vertical) and Services (capability) — at the top navigation. Don't bury one as a sub-menu under the other.
Why: Buyers enter the site with different mental models. Some search by industry ("agricultural lubricant supplier"); some by service ("bulk fuel delivery"). The dominant working model in the field (Crowe, Dentons, HUB International, RelaDyne, E.H. Wolf) is both axes visible simultaneously. Industries-only nav fails the service-led buyer; services-only nav fails the industry-led buyer.
Per Gartner: B2B buyers complete "six buying jobs" in non-linear "looping" order, B2B buyers loop between "solution exploration" (industry-led) and "supplier selection" (service-led) — the IA must support re-entry from either axis at any time.
How to apply:
- Top nav has Industries and Services as separate top-level items
- Hover/click on each opens a mega menu listing the sub-items (with NN/g mega-menu hover protocol: wait 0.5s before showing, then display within 0.1s)
- Each vertical page links out to relevant services; each service page links out to relevant industries
- The decision of which axis is primary (left of the other in the nav) depends on the business: distributors typically lead with industry; accounting firms lead with service (see Reference: which IA pattern to use, by business shape (decision matrix))
Depends on
- reference Crowe LLP: cleanest /industries/<slug>/ URL pattern in the sample (Audit/Tax/Advisory/Consulting × industries)
- reference Dentons: explicit Industries × Practices matrix at /find-your-dentons-team/ — "organized around your business agenda"
- reference Gartner: B2B buyers complete "six buying jobs" in non-linear "looping" order
- reference NN/g mega-menu hover protocol: wait 0.5s before showing, then display within 0.1s