Make the navigation easy
Easier said than done. Its easy to say that the visitor should reach his destination page just by 3 clicks, but at times, it really becomes difficult to implement.
When the website grows by volume, then it becomes even more difficult to maintain the principle of 3-click reach in navigation.
The best way is to focus on the system design part, when you conceive the website. Generally you design the sitemap first, which becomes your primary guideline to start with. You need to design on the menu and sub-menu very neatly. A voluminous website may have several segments and each segment may have different set of sub-menus. There can not be any strict guideline, but the webmaster can visit some websites to arrive at his design.
The age of programming has facilitated us with dynamic sub-menus, which makes the navigation much easier and more attractive to the visitors. Plenty of open source packages are available to cater to your needs, where you can customize with minimum efforts.
When the question of navigation comes, we must look at the SEO-friendly menus.
Java Script or Flash Menus may look nice because of their glitzy appearances, but simple HTML menus are more SEO-friendly.
Many search engine crawlers and spiders fail to read the fancy Java scripts or Flash movies. The external .js files may raise the security alert in the browser of the visitors.
Simple style with simple HTML codes and simple navigation make your website friendly to both visitors and Search Engine crawlers.