Comments on: Following User Navigation Paths

By: Mike Cherim

Mike Cherim — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:50:36 +0000

20,000 pages does make a huge difference. Search might be the most practical way to get anywhere. The navigation on a site that huge would be a considerable challenge on many levels, so in that case it makes perfect sense. There’s always a reasons for something, size in this case might be it.

Don’t know what Google’s problem is, though. Those guys have, what, a one-page site and yet the search percentage is like 100% or something like that :D

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:25:53 +0000

An important point in the thread (which I didn’t mention) is that this is on a very large website. That does make a significant difference. 25% going directly to search on a 20 page site would be disturbing; on a 20,000 page site, it’s more to be expected.

The site itself wasn’t specifically described; but if you think along the lines of a directory or a forum, search is really a pretty critical part of getting around.

Now, I’ll certainly agree that it’s entirely possible that the navigation has it’s own problems, either from an accessibility or a usability perspective — - but I suspect that the “very large site syndrome” tempers that to a degree.

By: Mike Cherim

Mike Cherim — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:08:02 +0000

25% going right to search is a bit indicative that the navigation scheme might not be intuitive or may be inaccessible to a degree. I guess I’d look into that. I’m not much into analytics, but I do review my stats regularly which tells me where my visitors are coming from, what they searched to get to my sites, and where they went once they arrived. But it doesn’t follow individual user paths. If I had 25% going to search though I’d have to do something to figure out what was wrong. First thing I’d do is ask some non-technical users to check out my site while I quietly watched them.