If you don't know about the Navigation Stress Test, it is time you consider it for serious adoption within your Web testing toolset. The Navigation Stress Test allows to evaluate the accessibility, usability and navigation framework effectiveness of any Web site.

Though the author himself declares that few pages will actually pass this test, I find it extremely useful to do this kind of work when discussing with customers and hard-to-win webmasters issues relevant to interface design improvements.

In any case, "the failures may be serious, or they may not matter at all, but at least by performing the test you will have discussed the navigation issues and made conscious design decisions."

The Navigation Stress Test consists of a set of questions to investigate in detail the three basic concerns users often have upon landing on a new Web Page:

1) Where am I?

2) What's here?

3) Where can I go?

A printable worksheet containing all of the questions to run through your testers is immediately available, as well as a series of images and a short PowerPoint presentation that illustrates how the process would be run on a normal Web page.

As simple, so effective.

Recommended.