[thelist] Site Feature Review: A-Z Index

[Stuart Young]

On 15/02/06, chase at ontask.net <chase at ontask.net> wrote:
>
> I am looking for articles that focus on the importance of browsing a Web
> site to find information verses the importance of keyword searching. What
> percentage of users prefer to go directly to the search function of a
> site? How many would rather look through a list of titles or subjects?
>

Jakob Nielsen's theory of search dominance...
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9707b.html
"Our usability studies show that more than *half of all users are
search-dominant*, about a fifth of the users are link-dominant, and the rest
exhibit mixed behavior."
get repeated as fact around the web, it is also in his text book, e.g.
http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/Design/Usability/use5_1.html

Jared M. Spool tests Nielsen's theory.
http://www.uie.com/articles/always_search/
He found that no users always went straight to the search, suggesting that
"what users *say they do* and what they *actually do* are very different."
He believes that useage of search depends on the product being searched
for...

"For example, users typically go to the search engine to find a specific
book or CD, however they tend to use the links to find a particular item of
clothing. We believe that the nature of the content on the site can play a
huge role in whether it is a search- or link- dominant site.

We also noticed that users often gravitated to the search engine when the
links on the page didn't satisfy them in some way. For a long time, we've
observed that users seem to use the search engine as a fallback after
failing to pick up "scent" on the home page."

cheers

--
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