The effects of menu design on information-seeking performance and userʹs attitude on the World Wide Web

As the Web becomes more popular, the interest in effective navigation is increasing. Menu design is becoming a central issue of human computer interface design as the focus of computer applications moves from the computer as a machine to the human as a user. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of three different Web menu designs (a simple selection menu, a global and local navigation menu, and a pull-down menu) on usersʹ information-seeking performance and attitudes. Three Cyber-shopping mall Web sites were developed for the experiment. These Web sites had the same content and a constant information structure, but each had a different menu design. The results showed different effect of menu design on both searching performance and browsing performance. More specifically, participantsʹ searching performance was superior in the pull-down menu condition compared to the global and local navigation menu and the simple selection menu conditions. Browsing task performance was the fastest with the global and local navigation menu. However, there were no significant differences among three menu designs in terms of usersʹ perception on appeal of the Web site and disorientation.