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There is no need to move your web site navigation around on any of your web site pages. Is it on the top? Leave it on the top. Is it on the side? Leave it on the side. Also, make sure that your web site linking colors stay the same throughout the web site via cascading style sheets.

This visual queue will help your web site visitors know where they are at all times. This can be accomplished in 3 ways: bread crumbs, page titles, and navigational highlighting. Bread crumbs show the user where they are on the site by labeling each page in the heirarchy, for example home > services > web design. This would mean that you were on the web design page in the services section. You could click the previous pages in the bread crumb trail to link back to them. To view an example site that we did the programming for using bread crumbs please visit: www.4thecoast.com. Page titles are often overlooked, but every page on your site should have the page title at the top or in an appropriate and obvious area. For example at the top of this page the title "How Do I Make My Web Site Navigation Easy To Use and Intuitive?" is there so we know what page we are on. Navigational highlighting may or may not work with your web site because it requires coding. How it works is, on your web site navigation buttons or drop down menu, the currently selected web site page is highlighted on the menu. Please see www.cfwpmc.com for an example.

This title should appear at the top of the web page, or in an easy to see area. The title of the web page should stay in the same area of the web page across the entire web site according to rule #1.

Your web site navigation scheme should not make visitors click more than 2 times to get to any page on the site. This holds true for most sites with less than 100 pages of web site contents. How do you decrease the number of clicks required? Rather than only linking to a page from a sub-page, add the link to the main navigational system.

Think of your web site navigation in terms of categories and sections. Don't blend other web site pages into another section by putting in in the same area, same size, or same color on the navigation.

This does not mean that your web site navigation has to be boring. Rather, avoid navigation schemes that make the user mouse over all parts of your web site before they can tell what the navigational element is. Many "artsy" Flash web sites are especially guilty of making the navigation some odd visual symbol that we have no idea of where to find. It is usually best to label your navigational buttons with text rather than only put a visual symbol.

"Having more than 5 - 7 navigational categories has been shown to confuse web site visitors. If you need more than 5 - 7 navigatioanl categories, try re-thinking your categories or adding on a sub-category.

This is particularly useful for larger web sites. For example: On Amazon.com the electronics section is a different color than the clothing section. These colors are a visual queue to the user of what category they are in, though they don't substitue for the 3 items listed in #2 of this list.