Website Structural Navigation

Discussion

The results of the experiment revealed that the navigation bars do make a difference. On average, it took about 60 seconds less time to navigate a site with the nav bars than without.

It also shows from the subjective survey that more people used the nav bars often (when they were available). About one-third of the users said that do not find the bars useful. Most just go straight to the search engine—an option that was disabled in this experiment. Only a small number of subjects said they ignore the bars completly and want to get rid of them.

But, based on the survey, most people do not mind having a navigation bar around. Some comments were:

• "I don't see why they shouldn't use them, if they are useful for some people, then they should have to option to use them."
• "I think the user should be able to toggle between having them and not. This way, if they are important to them, then they can use them. If not, screen space will be saved."
• "I would use the search feature to find my way around, but since the navigation bars doesn't take up much room, I don't mind them being left up for people who might prefer using them"
• "The navigation bars are very helpful for users when trying to find certain subjects. I definitely wouldn't want them to stop using them."

Based on these comments, the nav bars could be considered a tool for expert freqent users [Shneiderman, 69]. Novices who do not realize the advantage of the bars would simply ignore them. But advanced users who crave shortcuts and other accelerators could use the nav bars to their full potential and save valuable time finding their information.

Other Forms of Navigation

Why does not every site use a nav bar? Because other navigation aids usually are sufficient. Smaller sites that have almost every page linked to from the homepage have no need for a nav bar (it would only contain two levels at most points). A link to the homepage would take less space and not have redundant information (a link home and the current page's title repeated again). While this experiment focused on the structural navigation bar, there are many other forms of navigation that websites use.

The sidebar is very popular and often used as a means to highlight the current level. For example, the University of Maryland Newsdesk website has black links for a sidebar, except for the current level's pages, which are red.

The top bar on Adobe's website works the same way. If the current page is a second-level site (i.e. right off the homepage), then its graphic link is highlighted.

While there is no clear advantage to one navigation aid over another, designers use whichever one (or more) fits into their over design scheme. Their goal is to be consistent and predictable [Lynch, 16].

Differences in Nav Bars

There are many different ways to implement the structural navigation bar. The "Why This Site Has Almost No Graphics" page on useit.com explains why the author uses graphical arrows to separate the items in the nav bar. Previously he used colons which confused some people to think they were alternate choices.

Most sites use the greater than symbol '>' to indicate that the levels go deeper from left to right. The phrase "You are here" is used on some sites like the University of Maryland, but not on others like Yahoo!. Again, it is left to the discretion of the designers for the most appropriate look.