NAVIGATION: WEBSITE NAVIGATION - Getting around a website SHOULD be easy. The designer's job is to insure that experience. A variety of navigational aids and web elements should help visitors find what they are looking for and get there quickly.

The Basics of Navigation - You can have all kinds of great attractions on your site, but if your visitors don't know how to get to them, they'll just collect dust on the server. Worse yet, if visitors find your site's navigation confusing or convoluted, they'll simply give up and head off to explore the rest of the Web, never to return. So, good navigation design is an essential ingredient for any successful Web site.

Basic Principles of Web Site Navigation - Navigation is one of the most critical aspects of Web site design - arguably the most important. No matter how good a site looks, and no matter how much useful information it offers, if it doesn't have a sensible navigation scheme, it will confuse visitors and chase them away. A simple, logical, understandable navigation scheme can increase your number of page impressions, boost return visits, and improve your "conversion rate" (the number of visitors who are "converted" into customers). It's a critical aspect of site design that has a direct effect on the bottom line.

Designing Site Navigation - On every page of your site, you must provide clear and unambiguous answers to the two basic questions your visitors will ask themselves, "Where I am?" and "Where do I go from here?". I wouldn't say, though, that this should be given priority over the niceties of design (as you may expect me to), simply because thoughtful and professional design is highly unlikely to hinder navigating the site.