| Global
Navigation was defined as links to a site's top-level
categories that occur on every page of the site.
Data below is from 75 leading
e-commerce sites, collected in May, 2002. [sites
examined] |
| |
| |
Frequency of Global Navigation
97% of sites included global links
to the site's top-level categories.
While global links to top-level categories
help reinforce the breadth of a site's offering, they
also consume significant screen real estate for links
that arguably are not as relevant to users as page-specific
content. This is particularly true at the lower levels
of the hierarchy, where there is a larger amount of
semantic distance between the global links and the
page content. |
| |
| |
Location of Global Navigation |
| |
| |
| |
Style for Global Navigation |
| [style
definitions] |
|
43% |
Navigation Tabs (50% of these placed subnavigation
in a horizontal bar under the tabs.) [note] |
|
39% |
Navigation Bar
|
|
7% |
Plain List |
| 5% |
Pull-Down Menu |
4% |
Navigation Buttons |
|
| |
| |
Use of Pop-Up (Cascading or Fly-Away)
Menus
12% of sites used pop-up (cascading)
menus as part of their global navigation (example
below). These submenus allow user access directly
to deeper levels of a site from any page.
|
