We like to think we at Web Review know the ins and outs of making Web pages work. However, since you can never be too careful, we decided to consult the experts. We read Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville's excellent book about designing large sites. Then we took an advance peek at Jennifer Fleming's upcoming book, Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience. Finally, we hit the Web itself and checked out Jakob Nielsen's collected usability wisdom from the Alertbox column.
When we were all done reading, we figured out a set of navigation and usability rules. These rules aren't written in stone, and it's hard to follow all 12 of them at once. However, it helps to be aware of them so you can make the best design decisions for your own site.
