On Apr 24, 2009, at 4:54 AM, Coryndon Luxmoore wrote:
> So, while people see them as helpful, the real question is if the
experience of the site is diminished when they are absent. If users
don't miss them, then why make the investment?
I would flip this question around a bit and ask does it noticeably
improve the experience for some users since users rarely miss
unfamiliar features. That question for me has not been answered.
Though from the incidental results I saw during testing they seem
helpful to users navigating a large content site.
If you change "noticeably improve" to "measurably improve" I'm with
you there.
(Anyone know why "noticeably" has an 'e' before the suffix, but
"measurably" doesn't? English wasn't my first language -- Baby Talk
was. I've never mastered it.)
I personally have some thoughts as to why they could be better than
some of the other orientation tools
- They are positioned after scanning the page for "lost" users
- They are positioned after the page content to offer choices to
users who have "consumed" the pages content
- They typically layout two levels of the site which is space
intensive and distracting to the pages primary content if done in
the top or side navigation
- They require no scrubbing to see the site second levels like drop
menus
All this is true. However, the questions are about how they improve
the experience and whether their improvement is worth it.
Lost users will only benefit from the links if they make them less
lost. This will only happen if the content is what they are seeking
and the scent is good. Generic links that give off poor scent (think
"Products" or "Solutions") won't get someone un-lost.
Instead, it needs to be something specific to what they were actually
searching for. And there's the rub: If they knew how to find what they
were looking for originally, how did they become lost? The odds that
the detailed-footer / big-footer / sasquatch-site-map element is
better at helping a user find content than the intended navigation on
the site is, well, very small. If the designers could create great
navigation in the first place, they would quickly find that they don't
need these cop-out elements.
As for being positioned on the screen, many designs hide them behind a
horizontal rule and a chunk of whitespace (or two). We've known for a
long time (http://is.gd/umAU) that these visual elements stop users
from scrolling, thereby preventing them from seeing the footers.
I contend that building a powerful and useful detailed-footer / big-
footer / sasquatch-site-map element would take a ton of research and
expertise about how people locate information on the site. When you're
done with all that research, you might as well invest your efforts in
fixing the problems that got the user lost in the first place, instead
of helping them recover from what has become a negative experience.
Just my $0.02.
:)
Jared
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: [email protected] p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: jmspool
UIE Web App Summit, 4/19-4/22: http://webappsummit.com
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