Navigation
Use names for your navigation text using terms that are commonly used such as HOME, Contact Us, Products, Menu, or About Us. It does not pay to use catchy phrase that no one really know what they mean, which I often see.

Even worst can be using abstract images as the navigation button. I often see pictures that are supposed to mean something uses for navigation, but when I look at the navigation images I often have no idea what they mean. On some sites I often just sit there for 10 or 20 seconds waiting for the menu to load and then it never does. Then I have to experiment with the fancy text or images to go where I want on the site. You can guess what often happens if I do not find it quickly. I immediately leave the site. I hate it when people use a little picture of phone (which is often hard to tell what it is exactly) instead of saying Phone Number with the picture.

Put a basic navigation at the bottom of the page so viewers don’t have to go back up to the top of the page.

Put a link to your homepage on all the pages of your site. Commonly the logo of the site when clicked goes back to the homepage. I also thinks it is very important to put a text link back to the homepage, as it seems to me that Google also takes into consideration links from you own site back to the homepage. Also I know it is commonly accepter by website designers to use the Company logo as a link to a homepage, it is something I had not idea of.

Use a menu system like Yahoo! uses so people can see where they have come from and can work their way back such as:

Home > USA Restaurants > Florida > Miami.

This makes it easy for people to navigate your site.

Every page should have a good navigation links. The navigations links should be together, usually at the top or left side of the page and text navigations links at the bottom of the page so users don’t have to go back to the top of the page to reach the navigation links.

Make sure you have a good and easy to understand navigation system. You don’t have to have links to all your pages on all your pages as this could really get out of hand if you have more than a few hundred pages. Put a link to your homepage on all the pages of your site. Commonly the logo of the site when clicked goes back to the homepage.

It is usually best to use tables to organize navigation links. The navigations links should look the same on all the pages. Try to keep the amount of links from your Home Page to any page on your site to no more than three or four levels.

When designing a navigation system you should take into consideration that your users may enter your site from any page. It should be clearly understood what is the present page and how to get to other pages and what some option are. If you use images for your menu options, you can use a different image to indicate the current page. If you are using button you can have the present page button a different color that the other buttons.

Use a menu system like Yahoo! so people can see where they have come from and can work their way back such as:

Home > USA Restaurants > Florida > Miami.

This makes it easy for people to navigate your site.
Breadcrumb trails are a good way so not only do you know the present page but you can also follow the path that took you to the present page.

Home > Articles > Web Design > Current Article

All the links in the breadcrumb should link to the corresponding web page. The web page you are on should not have a hyperlink in the navigation, as you should not have a link to the page you are on from the page you are on

People can know what links that have visited by giving these links a different color. The standard color for links that have been visited is purple. The standard color for unvisited links is blue. It is highly recommended that you also use these colors, but you can set your own color for your site. I tried changing the colors on my original site and it caused me nothing by trouble, therefore unless I have a really good reason I stick to the standard colors for links.

You can emphasis you most popular destinations by various techniques, for instant making the link bold or making it a special color.

It is best not to link to all the section on a site from every page. It is often best to only link to the most importance or relevant sections of the website in relation to the page you are on. You should put a link to the home page which has a more detailed navigation system.

Using Flash
When using flash you should also give the option for users to use a HTML version of the web site. Personally when an option is given of Flash or HTML I always choose the HTML version. It is best that your page can load in less than 10 seconds (50 Kb max size including images), and flash can really slow this load time down.

Site Map for Navigation
Beside the navigation menu you should also give the option to use a Site Map which many users prefer to use rather than using the navigation system that of a site.

Search Facilities on Site
If your site is really large it is advisable to add search facilities.
You don’t have to have a search box on all the pages of the site but you should have a link to a search box somewhere on your each page of your site.

Viewers should be able to immediate see the link to the search box, and a good place to put it is in the upper right hand corner of the page. The search box should be set to search your site and not the web. It is best to send a user to a page of your choice (for instant the Site Map page) if after a search nothing is found, say for instance if the person searcher misspell a word in the search.

Freefind (http://www.freefind.com) is a good free and useful search engine that you can put on your site.