Website Structural Navigation

Conclusions

Impact for practitioners

The impact is clear—navigation bars are good, but more so for advanced users than novice ones. For large websites, they are invaluable. The amount of screen space lost is minimal and they show users where they are in the architecture. Web directories can help save people valuable minutes and hundreds of mouse clicks by implementing them properly. Since people are occasionally lost and confused without them, companies can relieve disorder and keep people on their websites for longer. In the world of e-commerce, that could mean millions of dollars lost or saved based on a simple navigation aid.

Suggestions For Future Researchers

There are many facets to this experiment that could be improved upon by future researchers.

• The tasks could include company websites instead of just web directories.
• The sites chosen should be easy to navigate (we found C|Net to be too difficult).
• If properly programmed, the 'real' website for each task should be used instead of simple mock copies. This way, all the links go somewhere (see experiment for the dummy.cgi problem).
• Users should be given an un-timed sample site so they can familiarize themselves with the experimental procedures.
• Have the subjects start at the site's homepage and navigate to a sub-level from there. Then have them travel to another page on the same branch. This way would help prove if the navigation bars are used on the second task or if the user goes straight back to the homepage.

Refine the theory or develop a new one

Our previous hypothesis that there would be very little time difference between the nav bar users and non-nav bar users was incorrect. The results show an obvious difference between those two types of tests. And although many people do prefer to go straight to a site's homepage, most use the navigation bars when available.

Other Suggestions

Websites that use nav bars may not be using them in the most efficient way. As the results show, people gave up even when the navbar was present, so perhaps they need to be made more prominent (especially in the C|Net example). But the nav bars are of no use if the site's overall architecture is flawed and not created properly. Things such as too many levels or too many items per level could create more confusion than necessary that even a complex navigation aid could not help with. Webpage design is a field that requires much work and testing to make as many people as possible comfortable with the site.