Above is an example of a well-built and common Site Navigation structure.  It is graphically pleasant to the eyes, easy to navigate, and provides straightforward methods for customers to reach product pages and site information quickly and with little hassle.

The following is a breakdown of the different portions of a navigation:

1. Top Navigation - The top navigation can be viewed as a "general" navigation, as it mostly provides assistance to the customer visiting the site.  Each navigation link will direct the customer to a different section of the site that provides information about the different services and functions of the site or provides the customer with information that is crucial to their account or order history.  Some sites don't utilize the top navigation for general purposes.  Instead, they feature product categories in the top navigation and use the footer navigation (pictured below) to provide "general" navigation links.
2. Left Navigation - The left navigation acts as a "category" navigation, allowing for customers to be able to browse categories quickly and effectively.  The left navigation is a common navigation method for products and categories, which helps to acclimate new customers to a familiar method of product navigation while consistently providing a reliable navigation system for current customers. The left navigation menu follows the hierarchy configured in the "Site Navigation" tool.
3. Sub-Navigation - Navigation items that expand on the standard navigation method are referred to as sub-navigations.  Here, you can see that a "hover" style has been placed on the left navigation.  When the user hovers over a category with the mouse, a sub-navigation opens up to display the subcategories within the primary categories.  This is a very useful system to keep your navigation short, yet allow for depth to be provided at the customer's convenience.
4. Drop-Down Navigation - As mentioned before, sub-navigations expand upon the standard navigation method.  Here, you can see a navigation effect that is commonly applied to a top navigation.  This is known as a "drop-down" navigation.  It does much of what the "hover" navigation does but instead shows a graphic drop-down display.  A drop-down normally presents itself when the customer hovers over the link with their mouse cursor.
5. Footer Navigation (pictured below) - The footer navigation commonly acts as a "general" navigation, providing links to information and customer assistance pages.  Sometimes, this can be an exact copy of the current top navigation or provide a sole general navigation when the current top navigation is utilized more for product and category navigation.

Be sure to visit our page on Editing Site Navigation in the Web Alliance Admin Manual to learn more on creating and editing navigation links in the Top Navigation menu and the Left Navigation menu.

The WebAlliance top navigation menu follows the hierarchy configured in your website's "Site Navigation" tool. In the example below, "Home", "Vandelay Products",  "Shopping", "Customer Service", "My Account" and "test" are visible in the top navigation menu of the website because those are the options set as visible "parents" in the "Site Navigation" tool. 

The standard WebAlliance top navigation menu allows one level of flyout options when the mouse hovers over the parent option. For example, hovering over "Shopping" in the top navigation shown below would display the "children" of the "Shopping" menu.

The WebAlliance left navigation menu always shows a dynamically generated set of quick-links to your website's product categories. The rest of its behavior can change depending on your website's design and the circumstance.

If the current page is not linked at all using the Site Navigation tool, then the left navigation menu will show only your website's product categories.

If the current page is linked in the Site Navigation tool and has no children (sub links), then the left navigation menu links the current page and its siblings, under a heading of its parent item. For example, here's the "Browse Our Catalog" page, which has no children, found under the "Shopping" parent:

If the current page is linked in the "Site Navigation" tool and has children (sub links), then the left navigation menu shows the current page as the parent item and links to all of its visible children. For example, here's the "My Account" page, which has 11 visible children in the "Site Navigation" tool: