I've travelled to New Hampshire twice. I've gotten lost in each time. Two other people I've talked to about it have had the same experience. That's three people who have had the same user experience in a very small sample set. From that, we can guess that New Hampshire has a user interface problem. Getting lost in New Hampshire has some great parallels to your website.

1. What is more important, where I am or where I want to go?
   The road signs in New Hampshire seem to be more road oriented, than destination oriented. The highway signs tend to tell you what road you are on, not which towns you can get to on that road. In the West, we are used to frequent signs that tell how far it is to the next town, to the town after the next town and to some large city in the distance. You almost don't even have to know what road you are on because you can target where you want to go. You know you are on the right road because the next town and the following town are your intermediate targets.
   
   Lesson: Your website should be visitor goal-oriented. The viewer is hunting for something; make it easy for viewers to target their goal by making sure that your links provide directions to where they want to go. A common mistake in navigation is to make your links match your internal business processes, not your viewers' goals.
2. Understand that not everyone sees what you see on your site.
   The visual clues to where you are on the highways of New Hampshire are very different from the West. In the West, towns are generally very visible from a distance. In NH the towns are often hidden by heavy forest forest areas. The visual clues are missing, and if the signs are missing, there are very few cues at all. I was travelling at night - in the dark - even fewer visual clues.
   
   What visual clues does your site give to your viewers as to what a link will go to. For example, a little icon of a letter is a good visual clue to mark your Contact Us link. (Use text to mark the link too!) Another example, the Concord, NH Marriott has wireless. To get to the wireless, you have to agree to their agreement. The agreement is easy to see - like a Montana town. However, there is no immediately obvious place to click to agree. I even refreshed the page, thinking the button didn't load. I was about to give up trying to connect when I found it in the left navigation with all the other buttons - like a NH town hidden in the trees.
   
   Lesson: Links are the only way your visitors know what's available on your website. Visitors come to your website with different skills and knowledge base. They will see things differently than you do. User walkthrough testing will show you what other people see on your site.
3. Ambiguous, missing or seemingly contradictory navigation/signs
   After landing in Manchester, NH, I needed to get on Hwy 101 East to get to I-95 and head to Maine. It was after 9:00pm and I had two hours of travel. From I-293, I saw an exit to Hwy 101 W; so, I watched for another sign for Hwy 100 E. I never found it. It took me about 25 miles to realize that I wasn't going to find it on the road I was on and that I was way north of Manchester. The place they should have told me where I needed to go was before I got on I-293. What happened was I took the wrong I-293 exit and headed West, instead of East.
   
   Folks coming from the airport are often unfamiliar with the area. Of all the places in a city for good signage, this is it! This was my third time in Manchester - and my third time being confused by their signs. I'm sure that the problem is that the folks who decided what the signs should say are people who are familiar with the area.
   
   Lesson: Your links are the "road signs" your visitors will use to get where they want to go. Your links should be worded with their understanding and target in mind. For example, you may have a project with the acronym YBNG, but that doesn't communicate anything to visitor, when you make a link with those letters.
4. You can't get there from here.