Exploring navigational patterns on the Web

Author

Zimmerman, Don ; Walls, Pat

Author_Institution

Center for Res. on Writing & Commun. Technol., Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO, USA

fYear

2000

fDate

2000

Firstpage

581

Lastpage

591

Abstract

Reports on our preliminary analyses of our research which was designed to determine the navigational patterns that users follow in the World Wide Web and hierarchical Web sites. In all, 33 participants completed the study using a within-subjects Greco-Latin design, where each person viewed two sites - one organized in a Web structure and one organized in a hierarchical structure. The results suggest no significant difference in the participants´ perceptions of their navigation of the sites, the sites´ ease of use, feeling lost in hyperspace, and the organization of the sites

Keywords

behavioural sciences; human factors; information resources; information retrieval; Web site structure; World Wide Web; ease of use; hierarchical Web sites; hyperspace; navigational patterns; participant perceptions; within-subjects Greco-Latin design; Communications technology; Navigation; Professional communication; Programming profession; Testing; Visualization; Web page design; Web sites; World Wide Web; Writing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Professional Communication Conference, 2000. Proceedings of 2000 Joint IEEE International and 18th Annual Conference on Computer Documentation (IPCC/SIGDOC 2000)

Conference_Location

Cambridge, MA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-6431-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IPCC.2000.887315

Filename

887315