Website Navigation
I’ve been designing sites for about 10 years now. One thing that I think is really important is consistent navigation throughout the site. I am surprised to see sites still being made that I have to use the browser’s back button quite frequently on.
If you can help it, make sure that your main navigation is always available to your users. If you make subpages for certain sections of your site make sure you have a subnavigation for that section. Internet users like to get to what they want as quickly as possible, the more intuitive your navigation the more users will like your site.
I would avoid trying to introduce “cool” flash navigation that users have to figure out just to be able to use. I would recommend using the traditional side nav or even better, in my opinion, a horizontal navigation.
Remember navigation is to help users get to where they want to go in your site. If you don’t make this process easy they’ll leave.