There are a couple more navigation tools that you can use on your site that I haven’t yet mentioned. So without further ado, here they are:

Inline Links
Inline links are what they sound like they are. They are when you attach a hyperlink to a certain word in a sentence of your content to take your visitors to another page. You don’t have to make these blue and underline them in order to make them more obvious to your visitor, but evidence does show that sticking to the convention does increase your Click Through Rate (CTR).

Make sure you provide enough textual links within a pages context so that the reader can get enough background information, but not so much that it interferes with the flow of the text on your main page too much, as with everything, you have to try to achieve a balance between the two.

Also ensure that the inline links are different enough from the rest of the text that people can recognise them clearly. There is nothing worse than trying to click on a link that isn’t there and wondering why you’re not going anywhere!

Finally, differentiate between internal and external links. The best way to do this, is to put in the address of any external links in the text so that the reader is aware that clicking that link will take them away from your website and on to someone else’s site. If it is an internal link, simply add the link to the appropriate text.

The Footer
This is where you should include all the boring, but essential information which is not relevant to the main aim of your site, such as your ‘about us’ section, ‘privacy policy’, ‘legal’ stuff etc. This way it doesn’t interfere with the main purpose of your website, but it is there should someone want to look at it.
You may also want to put a couple of other links at the bottom of the page as well, such as a ‘home’ link, especially if it is a long page, so people don’t have to scroll through all the text again to get to the next page.

Coding
The most effective navigation system you can use is simple text links. You can use CSS to make them look better, but all they basically are, are text links to other pages. With these virtually nothing can go wrong and they usually work with every operating system and browser combination and are easily maintained.
If you want to include an external link that opens a new window, you might want to type a little note to your visitor to let them know that clicking on that link will open a new browser.

If you really want to, you can use JavaScript or Flash driven navigation systems, but remember that not everyone has browsers that support this, including mobile phones and PDAs etc. Also, some users turn it off, and it makes it difficult for the robots to index your site. Finally, in terms of accessibility, screen readers can’t process JavaScript of Flash. So it’s up to you whether you include this or not.

That is everything I have to say about navigation on your site. It is now up to you to choose which method you use, and which method will suit your site better. Just remember the basics of what I have said and I’m sure you will get on just fine.