The 3 panel layout

"Choose a random page on your site, ask three questions about that page, and evaluate the answers you get. If you are unsatisfied with any of your answers, something is wrong with the page. It sounds simple, and it is. But it's remarkable how many obvious errors are introduced to a Web page during the rounds of compromised in the development process. The questions are:"

Where am I? Where can I go? What's here?

"Try it. Surf to any page on the Web and ask these three questions. Can you tell where you are? Can you instantly detemine what the page is about? Do you get a sense of the overall site architecture, and where you would go next if you continued surfing?"
-- From Jeffrey Veen's The Art & Science of Web Design