As mentioned in The Planning Phase, a hierarchical website has three page types; the home (or main) page, primary topic pages and subsidiary topic pages. The navigational structure of a well structured site should have the following seven attributes:
• A visitor should always have an awareness of where they are in your site
• Consistency. The appearance and location of your links should be the same across your entire site
• Page names (xxx.htm) should be similar to your navigation link names
• Before clicking on a link, a visitor should have a good idea of where that link will take them
• The home page should contain links to all primary topic pages.
• Each primary topic page should contain links to the other primary topic pages and to that topic's subsidiary pages (if there are any).
• Each subsidiary page should contain links to the other subsidiary pages within that primary topic, and to all the other main topic pages.

Typically your site will receive two kinds of visitors. First and most common are the ones that enter through the home page and see your site the way you intended it to be seen. The other kind of visitor is the one that drop in at one of the lower level pages as the result of clicking on a search engine link. Don't be fooled, one may seem slightly easier to satisfy than the other, but they both have their challenges.

TIP: Typically you can make web pages with different names, & this is the way everybody does it. But before what others are doing, you can study a bit further about the hosting web server. Basically web servers are setup to read some sort of default page before entering to a specific file name. For example, when you entered into our website www.tweenpath.com nobody did see what the name of the homepage file. Here in our web server, the default page is named as index.htm. & if you navigate through out our entire site, you’ll see in most of the case http://www.tweenpath.com/services here again we put another index.htm file inside services directory. This is not important or any sort of mandatory. In apache web server the default page is name typically index.htm or index.html. This is used only the keep your browser’s address cleans as well as everything is put up in a systemized manner.

Visitors that Start at the Home Page
The visitor starting at your home page has greater expectations. Because he/she is starting at the beginning, they expect your navigational structure to lead them to their particular area of interest without confusion or misdirection. For that reason, your link names must accurately represent the contents of the target page. Anything less will frustrate and confuse your visitor and possibly give them enough reason to leave.
 
Choose the Right Names
When naming your links, review your target page and look for no more than three key words that summarize the contents of that page. These don't necessarily have to be words on that page; they just need to create an accurate expectation. Also, whatever name you choose for your link, be sure to choose something similar for that page's URL name. I.e., don't call your link "The Bookstore" and then name your page "Page14.htm".

Give Each Page a Title
What better way to reinforce that the contents of the destination page matches the link that took you there, than to use a descriptive title (on the destination page) that matches the link name. A page title in a type larger than the rest of the text on a page will be one of the first things a visitor sees when arriving at the page. If nothing else, it will give your visitors a warm fuzzy feeling to know that they arrived at the right place.

Be Consistent
In our early discussion we’ve already mentioned about website consistency. The most frustrating experiences on the web are trying to navigate a site where the navigational structure changes on each page. Whatever you decide on, whether it's a horizontal menu at the top of your pages, or a vertical menu down the left side of your pages, MAKE SURE IT'S THE SAME ON EVERY PAGE. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, especially when it comes to large sites like Yahoo or MSN, but most of us won't ever have to worry about managing a website that is that complex. Keep it simple, so that your visitors don't have to think, and you'll have happy visitors.

Another exception to the consistency rule is your home page. Your home page has a totally different purpose (as discussed in our previous newsletter) and therefore does not have to adhere to the site's navigational structure. However, the home page should contain links to all the primary topic pages. The last thing you want a visitor to do is to arrive at a primary topic page and see links to other primary topic pages that weren't on the home page. You don't want them saying to themselves "Where did that come from?" My philosophy behind a good navigational structure and link naming convention is No Surprises.

Leave your track
Something we see being used more and more on the web is breadcrumbs. Like you have to show you viewer where they are right now. Unlike breadcrumbs are visible markers that trace your visitor's steps through your site. They are typically displayed in the upper two inches of each page and list out the pages that the visitor stepped through to get to their current page. The standard designator between pages is the ">" (greater than) symbol.

Don't Fool Your Visitors
There are basically four kinds of links:
• The ones that take your visitor to another page on your site
• The ones that take your visitor to another site
• The ones that bring up an email window
• The ones that start a download

It is absolutely critical to ensure that your visitors know which is which or what is what. Something we find extremely aggravating is to click on a link that I assume will take me to another page on the site, and then find out that I just started a download. The links in your navigation bar should only link to other pages on your site and possibly an email link. NEVER include links that start downloads or links to other sites in your navigation bar. These should be within the body of the page and should be clearly identified. No Surprises.
Visitors that arrive at lower level pages

Not every visitor will enter your site through the home page. Often, a search engine robot will index the primary topic and subsidiary pages of your site, thereby resulting in visitors entering your site at almost any page. To create location awareness for these visitors, we would once again strongly suggest using breadcrumbs. The really nice feature about breadcrumbs is that they tell you where you are, no matter where you came from. It's like going to a mall and looking at the directory. The first thing you always look for is the "You Are Here" indicator. Once you find that, you know exactly where you are in relation to the rest of the mall.

Take Me Home
For those visitors that enter your site in the middle, a really handy way of establishing orientation is the link to the home page. In fact, we would go so far as to say that every page on your site MUST have a link to the home page. It gives your visitors a way of starting from scratch. Lately, more and more sites are using their logo's to link back to the home page, and web surfers are quickly becoming accustomed to finding the home page link there.

The Site Map
Even for small sites, a site map can be a very useful tool. First, it gives newcomers, especially the ones that enter via a lower level page, a place to get their bearings. A site map is basically an outline of your site, with each level being indented slightly to show groupings. The advantage to this is that it displays on every page and therefore creates an instant aid to location awareness. If you do decide to add a site map to your site, be sure to add a link to it in your navigation links. It won't do anyone any good unless they know it's there and have easy access to it.
Site Maps are sometime pretty handy tool for browsers. May be you have some important stuffs in your site, & all of a sudden a viewer came to a dead end that his/her browser doesn’t support your site. Because of you’re using some non supported scripts that most supported browser doesn’t allow navigate. Once again beware of using Java Applets or other malicious scripts. And again, we advise you to avoid using Frame Based Websites. Using a framed site, search engine spiders won’t seek the exact info. May be they ended up something like “This page uses Frame” and your browser may not support that. Or it could be some sort of like presenting a crippled page which shows without the other part of the framed content.

I Can't Find What I'm looking for
If your site has lots of content, you should certainly consider adding a site search engine. Not only will it accelerate finding something specific on your site, but it will also verify that you site does contain the sought after information. Sometimes, looking for something specific on a large site can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to query the haystack and find out if this is the one with the needle?