A recent client request to review their web site usability prompted me to codify some of the rules with which I approach web navigation. These 3 principles work 100% and every deviation from them only brings confusion to the end user and thus lowers the corporate ROI (Return on Investment).

Rule Number 2:

Less-Is-More.

A great universal principle that was made famous by the legendary European architect Mies van der Rohe.

Your web site should include only the essentials and nothing else. People are busy, tired and already bombarded with information and infomercials all day long. We have to respect their time.

Eye candy does not respect anybody's time. It is pure diversion for the aimless. It is great for a few seconds. Then your visitor clicks the mouse and moves on to somewhere else that perhaps does not look as jazzy but has the needed information, right there on the Index page, easily accessible. Case closed. Money lost.

Make sure your links have the minimum possible number of words.

If "Careers" is enough to do the job, do not label your link "Available career opportunities in our company."

When "About Us" is a simple and well-accepted link label for corporate background information, do not call it "Our Past, Present and Future."

Make sure your web page content fits a single screen and your visitors would not need to scroll vertically or (God forbid!) horizontally to read your content. Even if they need to scroll down, make sure it would require a minimal effort and not a toilet-paper-roll scroll (unless you own one of those single-product single-page "micro sites" which are anything but "micro").

Do not include any links, offers, affiliate plug-ins, ads etc. in your web pages if you have less than 5,000 visitors a day (which probably represents over 90% of all the web sites out there). In my personal experience, until and unless you attract 5,000 unique daily visitors, all those links, plug-ins, ads etc. just clutter up your web site with no significant ROI benefits.

Ask yourself if $10, $30 or $50 a month of "ancillary income" is worth diluting your message, distracting your visitors, and losing them by inviting to click on a link that would take them to another site.