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Effective and user-friendly navigation is one of the most important elements in web design. The types and styles of web site navigation systems are as varied as the web sites they are on. It is a good idea to visit other web sites when planning your navigation to see how others have done it. Visiting web sites will give you an objective look at the do's and do not's of different types of navigation systems and give you the opportunity to consider your web sites navigation from that perspective. The most common location for the navigation menu is on the left side and/or across the top of the web page. Most people looking at a web page scan from the top-left across the page to the right, then diagonally down to the lower-left and finally across to the right, essentially a Z scan. It just makes good sense to have the menu in a location that is most noticeable. It is also important to keep the size of the menu to a minimum. Small, precise and easy are critical elements of menu design.

Thinking outside the box may be great in many areas, but not in the menu system for your web site. If your visitor has trouble determining how to get to where they want to go, they will simply leave. On smaller sites that do not have a lot of pages, the menu can easily and clearly be displayed on the left of the page. For larger sites with many categories, and many pages within each, a little more creativity is needed. Often web sites of this nature will list the main categories across the top of the page, and then in the left menu on each of the pages will be listed the related links for that category. The top category menu should be consistent throughout the web site for the benefit of your visitors.

Another common method of navigation is a drop-down menu. These tend to be located across the top of the page. When the mouse is moved over the main headings, a list of the pages and/or sub-categories drops down and can be viewed and accessed. Embedding links within the body text of your web page is another effective method of affording visitors easy access to other relevant content elsewhere in your web site. Visit the DHTML Menu Generator and in addition, our archive of Java Script contains a variety of navigation menu scripts that you can use on your web site.

It is important that no matter what type of work you do on your web site, you would be well advised to test the code in as many varieties and versions of web browsers as you can to ensure your site will be viewed as you had intended. Another consideration is that of accessibility by assistive technologies. For example, the blind use readers that literally read the code and content of your web page. For those individuals, clear code and clear simple language is the best. All images should have alt text, all links should have titles that the readers can relay to the visitor and allow them to better navigate your website. The added bonus of doing this type of coding is search engine spiders like it best as well. While it may be more work and effort to use good, clean, clear coding and descriptions in your navigation systems, it does have the benefit of making your web site more accessible to everyone, including those all important search engine spiders.

The best solution is to have a full text-link menu on every page, so that any page will be available within a maximum of 2 clicks. I am saying text links, as this will be much of use for the Search engines, and unlike Java menu or images buttons - will always display properly.

Summary:
Easy & fluent navigation is the key word in web design. If your visitor is impatient, like the most, and getting lost in the maze of your site, trying to find the particular page he came for - he is likely to give up and close the window. Always make sure your visitor has everything "under the nose" and never prefer some novice design over user-friendly navigation. Just imagine, if this site had no Site Map, nor detailed navigation, how would you be able to find the page you are currently reading.?
Article written by Lorelei.