The design of a navigation system is one of the most difficult aspects of designing your own CMS. Not only do you have to make it easy to use, intuitive and attractive, it also has to be scalable.

There aren’t many websites we design that stay static for very long. Sooner or later they are going to expand, and the navigation needs to accommodate that without too much hassle.

As web designers we are responsible for designing something that looks good now, but will also look as good when it’s twice the size, carrying twice the links than when we started.

We have to plan where we are on the site, where can we go, where we have been, what is at the next level and what’s new, or featured that we need to link to. Of course they aren’t the only considerations, there are many more, but let’s stick to the basics.

The structure of the site will determine what kind of navigation is most suitable. Top navi bar, body copy navigation, historical, numbered page, or feature navigation. These and others all lend themselves to different types of website and structures.

Top navigation bars would be most suitable for single level sites like blogs. Body copy is more suited to a Wiki type site, or ones for affiliate marketers where the links in the body text tell you where to go next.

Historical navigation is less intuitive, mainly telling you where you have been and where you can go next rather than offering complete freedom. A site that has things like “Recently viewed Items” are good examples of historical navigation.

Numbered pages are used a lot on template sites, or most popularly at Google. The search result pages are numbered at the bottom. Feature navigation is where the page choices are highlighted for the visitor. News sites use this kind of structure for breaking news, or features. These are dynamically updated so the links change, sometimes on an hourly basis.

Navigation will make or break a site. It doesn’t matter how good the content or the design, if visitors can’t get around then the site is a failure. Making it work in the present while having an eye on the future, is what separates a good web designer from a great one.

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