Navigation is the main tool for orientation on a website, and its quality shows up immediately in whether people find what they came for. The practical rules are simple. Keep the main menu short, because as the number of items grows, the likelihood that the user notices the right one at all decreases. Name the items using the customer's words, not internal terminology – a section called "solutions" says less than a specific name for the service. Use dropdown menus sparingly; they do not work well on mobile and hide content from those who do not click to expand them. Important items such as contact, price list or offer belong in a visible place, not in the footer. And the menu must be consistent across the entire website, so that the user does not have to learn the orientation anew.
See also: Information architecture, Breadcrumbs, Click depth.
