Each navigation bar or frame should have these basic elements:

• Quit
• Help
• Back
• Search
• Menu (home)

Other suggested recommendations to facilitate easy navigation include:

• Menus should not exceed five to seven options or tiers
• Menus should give some indication of architectural framework
• Inclusion of table of contents or index
• Pull-down menus to be used sparingly so not to hide other ‘options' or compact too much information

Lever-Duffy and McDonald (2001, pp. 188, 218, 280) produced rubrics to assess the usefulness of software and a website and the productivity of software. Download these rubrics here.