In a recent post, James Kalbach says that people notice more on your website when browsing than searching. In fact, a study showed that people visited 10 times as many non-targeted content pages when browsing. 62% of users who used category links continued looking after they found targeted content as opposed to 20% who continued looking after using search.
Another study found that test subjects who were asked to explore a site as they wished performed better on recognition and recall tests than subjects who were asked to search for specific information.
James says:
“People prefer information that involves sequence. They like to browse. Navigation provides a narrative for the people to follow on the Web. It tells a story–the story of your site. In this respect, there is something both familiar and comforting about web navigation. The widespread, seemingly natural use of navigation to access content on the Web reflects its strength as a narrative device.”
July 16th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
There’s a related thread over on Mike Moran’s blog about “Do Site Searchers Want Just One Answer?” Might be worth checking it out if you are into user behavior in relation to search and navigation.
http://www.mikemoran.com/biznology/archives/2008/07/do_site_searchers_want_one_ans.html