mobile application - How to decide to what should go in more options menu?

I was deciding what should go in menu of the app I am developing. Here menu: means more option menu at bottom nav with ... icon.

I looked in other apps out there I notice something strange. That some options like about, signout, upgrade to premium, support are under settings menu item. I could not understand what is the basis for this (those things cannot be categorized under settings)? I suppose reason may be designer hide less important menu items under settings, to avoid overwhelming users with large number of options on the more options menu.

I have following items to organize under more options menu.

profile, notifications, stats, settings, help, feedback, community, sign out, upgrade to premium, invite

Among them I have identified items with high importance

profile, stats, settings, notifications

should I hide the remaining under settings? How should I go about organizing this more options menu?

Answer

The Navigation Drawer has been described as the "dark basement" of navigation options, providing a place where assorted junk can be thrown so it doesn't get in the way of "normal household duties". The basement in a house is also often the least visited area of a house. Similarly, the overflow menu in Android and last tab on iOS often play the role of "the basement" in apps, this is why you will occasionally find such a tab named "Settings" on iOS yet contain much more than settings (iOS designers hit that wall and cannot get around it, it seems).

Given you have identified high importance navigation items, I suggest you make them more readily available than they would be in any "basement" type container. An obvious way to do that would be to make those items available in Tabs on iOS or either Bottom Navigation or Tabs on Android. Then utilise a "basement" type container for the remaining "junk" screens.

I would also think about making a call to action in perhaps multiple parts of your app to 'upgrade to premium', rather than relying on the existence of a low priority navigation item hidden away in the "basement". Doing so in-line, where you can make it clear what the benefits of premium are and how it will manifest, will provide ongoing reminders to freemium Users and I wager an increased conversion rate.

While we are here, I would like to offer some extra advice:

• Consider whether sign out feature is truly useful for your mobile app. For most mobile apps it is not suitable, it is merely there because websites tend to have the feature and/or other apps have the feature. Sign out feature became crucial on websites that utilise authentication mostly due to the proliferation of Web Kiosks and Internet Cafes, after all Personal Computers were considered more personal before that. Sign out requires that your Forgot Password (or similar account recovery) mechanism be existent, available, and performant plus you have some form of Customer Service for those experiencing trouble - and that usually comes at a cost. With a high cost, what are the benefits? Sign out interferes (it should interfere, otherwise sign out is broken or lacklustre) with cloud-based Push-Notification services and the like whereby instantaneous access to a service is not guaranteed when "signing up" or re-entering the service (e.g. Firebase will not necessarily be instantaneously available when your app re-registers for an FCM registration token). And the mobile platform should already provide much better controls for sharing a device (e.g. device keyguard/key lock, Android Multiple User Support, and Parental Controls).


• Do include a Licenses screen/section, because no doubt you are leveraging some open-sourced software and thus you are required to attribute licenses accordingly.