A good website will have easy navigation, so that the site's visitors can easily find what they are looking for.

Some aspects of good navigation are:

• A good website will have an easy-to-use navigation tool, complete with links to all areas of the website. The navigation tool should be in the same place on every page of the website and should be located near the top of each page, so that the site's visitors will not be forced to scroll in order to click to a new page. Sometimes, it is prudent to put a navigation tool at both the top and bottom of every page so if the visitor scrolls to the bottom of the page, they don't have to scroll back up to click to a new page (i.e. like this website.)


• Navigational links should have short, yet descriptive labels. They should not leave the site's visitors guessing, randomly clicking links, unsure which link has what they are looking for. Some undescriptive link labels would be things like "Info", "Form", or "Combo".


• The navigation tool on a good website must be something that works in all browsers, or at least has an alternative navigation tool that works in all browsers. If a website's navigation tool requires a special plug-in or support (i.e. Flash or Javascript) an alternative navigation tool must be available for visitor's whose browsers do not have the necessary plug-ins or support or deactivated.


• Depending on the purpose of the website, some websites may be more appropriate for "Linear Navigation". A website with good linear navigation will have links on every page that say "Next" & "Previous", or "Forward" & "Back", or perhaps "Step 2 of 5" & "Step 3 of 5", or something else to that extent.


• If the website consists of a large database of information (whether it be of product-descriptions, member-profiles, news stories, song lyrics, etc.) where each record has it's own "page", and there are too many records to list them all individually -- First, they should be catagorized (i.e. a pets website can be broken down into "Dogs", "Cats", "Fish", "Birds, etc. or a song-lyrics website can be catagorized alphabetically by artist or title "A's", "B's", "C's", etc.). Second, if this many records exist then a Search Box is likely to be in order. A Search Box can allow the visitor to enter a search-criteria and then have all the records (products, pets, songs titles, articles, etc.) that match the criteria.

In summary, when visiting well-designed website, the navigation tool should look and function the same on every page, and a visitor should be able to get from anywhere in the website to anywhere else in the website without ever having to scroll or touch their browser's toolbar (i.e. The "Back" button).

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