Navigation design is more than a laundry list of links. To help you build the best navigation scheme for your site, we've collected the best resources on the Web. We'll point you to the latest on information architecture and interface design, introduce you to the key personalities in navigation design, provide help with key navigation issues in JavaScript and style sheets, and even lead you through the Web's top navigation portals. It focuses on designing by purpose, with chapters on entertainment, shopping, identity, learning, information, and community sites. What drives me nuts is how hard web designers make it for people to find their way around a web site.
Most web sites are about as focused and convenient to navigate as the bargain shoe rack.
Instead of helping me find my way around, instead of offering functionality and features that help me get where I'm going and find what I'm looking for, they lay everything out in a big mishmash of buttons and text links, then wish me luck getting there. Your site will succeed or fail in direct proportion to how well you organize your information. Visitors expect you to make sense of your info and message, and to suggest some paths through your pages. Also, there is more to it than just dividing your content into sections. For your site's interface to succeed your users actually have to stop noticing your interface and its navigation.