By Mac Hamilton-Ogden, 3210 Consulting

Spend enough time browsing web design sites and you'll inevitably encounter an "award-winning" site design that, quite simply, doesn't work. Somewhere between those 12 different shades of fuchsia and that semi-transparent pop-up menu you found yourself a bit confused.

There's a lot to be said for functionality and familiarity. Most of the web's highly usable sites will never win any design awards, and, to be frank, their designers aren't interested in doing so. Without functionality, familiarity and useful content, the web design award is the end of the road.

Functional and Familiar

When visitors first arrive at your site, they need to know where they are.

Next, they need to know where they can go and how they can get there. Say, for instance, that a first-time visitor lands on a sub-page deep within your site. That nice little introduction on the home page that you were relying on has just failed you.

breadcrumb navigation also aids in search engine optimization

Redundant navigation. Another easy step that makes a site more navigable is to include top-level navigation in both the header and footer of every page on the site. By including this redundancy, you're enabling your visitors to find what they are looking for easily and quickly.

Efficient clicking. After adding breadcrumbs and redundant navigation you'll find that you have a fair number of extra links on every page, so it becomes absolutely essential to make every click count. Your visitors are likely to know what they're looking for and will want to get straight to it. If they don't know what they're looking for, they will still want to be able to see all options with as little hassle as possible. A good rule to follow: no page on your site should be more than three clicks away from any other page on the site.

There are numerous other steps that can and should be taken to ensure optimum navigability for your site that will be addressed in future articles. For now, let's just say that design matters, but it's just one small piece of the puzzle. So, next time you see a site of overwhelming design and underwhelming navigation, take solace: the site might look fantastic, but if you've take the proper steps to ensure that your site is both functional and familiar, then it's pretty much guaranteed that your conversion rate* eats theirs for breakfast.

* Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action.