Navigation - when every page is the home page

Interesting time over the weekend. The back button on my browser stopped working! You really don't realise how much you use it until it's not there and it really makes you appreciate good navigation on websites. How easy is it to get to what you are looking for? How simple to get back to the home page? Can you see where you are on the site?

This last one is becoming ever more important when the search box is just sitting there on the top right of your browser. A considerable number of your visitors will arrive on your site as the result of a Google, Bing or other search and you have little control over where they land. As such, every page becomes a home page. And, when your visitor can't see what you are looking for it is as easy for them just to enter a new search or click the back button to the search results than trawl around your site.

One of the things that I did find frustrating was when I landed on a site which didn't have crumblines (you know the series of links that show where you are on the site) that really made me miss the back button.

I always believed that navigation and site layout has always been a major feature for good website design and this experience has just strengthened my belief that navigation is the main feature on stick ability.

Actually, I might not even fix the back button.