Navigation of a website allows visitors to discover the correct path to the content they are looking for. The user’s journey while “surfing” your site should be as simple, painless and as clear as possible.

By establishing a clear path to each possible destination within your website, it will make it straightforward for visitors to return to any page at any time, without creating confusion of how to do so. This will allow all users (novice to expert) to feel in control of their journey which will increate repeat site visits.

By searching the internet, you will see various styles and techniques being used for navigation systems. For example, navigation bar’s along the top of the site, left-hand side navigation or even a combination of the two. Whichever you do choose, the one main goal is….keep things simple. By doing so, it will significantly increase the instant understanding of a site to all users.

Below is a few points to consider when designing your sites navigation
1. Text links Navigation – Using linking text that contains a few (one or two) words that summarise of what the page is about. Text navigations system can help in SEO, it allows a search engine spider to quickly and efficiently crawl the maximum number of pages.
2. Graphical Navigation - can sometimes help in illustrating content of a certain page.
3. Be consistent. On each web page make sure that the navigation is exactly the same.
4. Navigation should be displayed without the need to scroll down the page further.
5. Make each page within a site accessible within a few clicks.
6. If you decide to use JavaScript navigation, be aware that some users disable JavaScript which would make the navigation unusable. Therefore have a precaution is place. (for example using the no script tags).