Website Structural Navigation

Authors (for feedback)

Noah Lazar – nlazar@glue.umd.edu
Michael Eisenbrey – snakpak@wam.umd.edu

Abstract

The 'structural navigation bar' is becoming a ubiquitous element on many websites. It not only shows users where they are currently located in the site's architecture, but it allows them to back up levels—one at a time. To find the University of Florida in the example above, a person could just click on "Universities" and then find Florida instead of having to go to the site's homepage.

In theory, this is an ideal form of navigation for large sites, but are they really useful? Do people utilize them, or just go straight to the homepage or search engine. This experiment tests whether this type of navigational reference is truly valuable.