Designing a site raises so many structural challenges. Should a site tree be narrow and deep? or wide and shallow? or deep and wide? How many navigation buttons are appropriate per page? How many clicks should it take to move from one deepest point to another?  

Regardless of how good or otherwise your site tree is, the main concern here is the visitor and their ease of use and perception of where they are in the site and how to get somewhere else.

A good way to test your site's overall structure and navigation is to make a mock up of the site free of any fancy stuff - no graphics, colour or copy, just plain navigational text links on each page with page headings. Give this 'structure only' site to a few unsuspecting people and ask them to find pages. Watch and listen!

Have you ever been to a large site that presents you with menu after menu? You know you are burrowing down into the site, deeper and deeper, and still you haven't reached the content you're after. All that work and nothing to eat!

Everyone seems to agree that menu after menu is bad and it makes sense. Surely with good navigation and a goal that defines what content is important we can do better.

So how many clicks are acceptable to get from one end of the site to another? 3? 5? I try and stick to 3, with 5 as the worst. Keeping the number of clicks in mind from the start forces you to address site structure and appropriate navigation.

Frames are popular for solving navigation dilemmas on large sites. Lately navigation drop down lists have been appearing, usually in the absence of frames. Which is better? Personally I find frames messy and problematic in many ways. Drop downs aren't particularly pleasing to look at, but they are very efficient space wise and relatively simple.

Dynamic HTML offers many solutions to this problem with it's many capablilties. Layers containing navigation can be made visible when needed, giving an efficient and interactive feel to the site. But how many people are using version 4 browsers? The most optimistic stats have it at around 75%. Are you willing to sacrifice the other 25% or build other versions of the site to cater for the older browser?

So site structure and navigation are areas that require a lot of thought and planning. Not only will your visitors enjoy their stay more, but you'll keep your sanity through hours of construction and maintainence. Like the guys at Netobjects say: 'An organized web site is a sign of higher intelligence'!