Your website is one of the most important aspects of your business. If done correctly, it’s the first thing people see about your brand or product. Unless you’re such a well-known brand that people don’t have to search online to find out about, then you should make sure your website is not only a sales tool but a resource for your potential customers.

Fill your website up with good content, about your product, about your company, about your process, about how to use your product or service effectively. Then, make it easy to find.

When you consider your website, take a look at your navigation. A bad navigation could ruin the fact that you have tons of great content on your site by making it too much work for your website visitors to find. When creating a good navigation, there are several things you can consider:

1) Who is looking at this page?

The audience for your website and specific pages is perhaps the most important thing to look at when considering your navigation. Put yourself in their shoes. What would they be looking for? What information do they need served to them via a sidebar or header navigation?

2) Is there related information that should be easily accessed from this page?

When someone visits this page and consumes the information, what other information do they need to supplement this information? Are there questions they might have to follow up on the information they’ve just consumed?

3) Is your content clearly labeled?

This one should be a no-brainer! However, it’s not. Ensure that you aren’t using industry slang unless your content is focused only on people in your industry. Make sure that when someone clicks on a label, the content that you then serve to visitors is what they expect to see associated with that label, and vice versa. Ensure that the content you have is labeled in an easy-to-search-for-and-find-way.

4) What are the key elements you want customers to see when visiting your site?

When people get to your site, what is it that you want them to find?
There should be a clear main point for your website and business. If you have other lines of business or supporting points, make them prominent as well. What options is it that you want people to have as soon as they get to your site?

5) Is your contact information easily accessible?

There’s a good chance that when someone visits your site, they will need to access your contact information. They might need to shoot you an email, call or even know your location and hours. Make this information clear. Don’t make your website visitors search for this information.

6) What call to action is your page looking to incite?

Extremely important, what do you want your site visitors to do when they consume the content on each page? Some pages might want you to watch a video, while some might be more compatible to get visitors to sign up for an email list. A downloadable eBook might be the goal of your information. Whatever your call to action is, the navigation is a great place for it.

Your navigation might just be something that you install as a necessity, but if you put a little bit of thought and strategy around it, you’ll find it can be one of your greatest online assets.

Kala Linck is the Community and Content Manager at Duct Tape Marketing. You can find her blogging her travels, praying for summer or tweeting about marketing, coffee and cats @tadasunshine.