Here I will list and explain three of the other options available to use instead of your standard navigation bar, in order to make your site more interesting and easier for your visitor to find their way around.

1)Search Site

This is often considered to be the most usable method of finding information within a site, by visitors, if it is properly used.

I would recommend that if you choose to use this, you also use some other form of navigation tool as well, as some people will use this as their first choice to navigate themselves around your site, but others will only use it as a last resort.

All it basically involves is your visitor typing into a box what they are looking for and clicking ‘GO’ or ‘SEARCH’, much in the way that most search engines themselves work.

The downside to using a ‘search site’ box, is that it may be easier for your visitor, but it takes longer for you to set up and will often need to advertise the search site provider and the way in which the results are laid out may not match the style of your site.

2)Breadcrumbs
You will often see a ‘breadcrumb trail’ near the top of the page on a lot of sites. It will usually look something like:
Home > Products > Jewellery > Necklaces > Silver

Now that you have seen an example of a breadcrumb trail, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about!
There are two types of breadcrumb. The first (Position Breadcrumbs) simply tells the visitor where they are on your site. The second (Path Breadcrumbs) are slightly more complex and shows the path that your visitor has taken in order to get to the page they are on.

Position Breadcrumbs
If your site is organised well then it is easy to set up position breadcrumbs because all it involves is your visitor moving through folders and sub-folders in order to reach the page they are looking for. The advantage of this is that your visitors can land on pages deep within your website and still find their way back again through a hierarchy of index pages. However, this also means that in order for this to work, you have to have a much organised website.

Path Breadcrumbs
If your visitor has only visited a couple of pages on your site, it is pretty pointless to have path breadcrumbs, as it shows your visitor to track their navigation history. However, once they have visited a few pages this type of breadcrumb becomes more useful than Position Breadcrumbs.

3)Tag Clouds
These are quite popular on social networking sites. A tag cloud is exactly what it says on the tin: a cloud of links. The bigger the cloud, the more popular that particular link is. It provides you with a useful indicator as to what people on your site are interested in, but they only really work if you have a lot of articles and posts to tag, so are no good if your site is very small and focuses on one small area, e.g., fruit juice.