Web Site Design Tips: Navigation

• Make hyper-links and image maps obvious, especially if they are important. Don't make people guess (unless that is part of the "point" of the site) what is "clickable" and what isn't.
• Label image maps. Most icons and images can be interpreted in different ways. Label image links so viewers don't have to guess where they lead to.
• Straight-forward navigation can make up for a lot of other shortcomings - but nothing can help a site with confusing navigation. Main navigation items should always be the same and in the same location. The top of the screen and left of the screen are the best places for your main navigation. Right side navigation can be lost to viewers using lower resolution settings. Designing for 600x800 resolution in the first place is a good way to avoid this.
• Most sites have navigational links displayed in text format at the bottom of each page. This is a good idea for many reasons, but most important is that people are starting to expect it.
• Show visitors the way home. Link back to your home page on every page in the site. A good way to do this is to have your logo be a link to the home page.
• Site maps and search boxes are very important for large sites. Not all visitors think alike. Some of them will get frustrated trying to use your navigation system. Site maps and search options are good ways to help these visitors find what they're looking for.
• Use "Alt" tags on all images. These serve a few purposes, 1) they replace graphics in web-readers (used by the visually impaired) and in browsers where the graphics have been turned off, 2) they are indexed by some search engines and contribute to site rank, and 3) they give surfers something to read while the site is loading (of course, it's better to just have a really fast-loading site).

Check out HTML/XHTML Tips if you will be coding by hand.
Check out Graphics Tips if you will be creating your own graphics.

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