If you think the flash menus and moving messages and clever blobs of information and color are helping your users navigate your web site. Think again. A recent study on Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox shows that over one-quarter of the users who wanted to perform a search can’t get to Google to find anything!
This is a “frame of reference issue”. Users who are new to computing have no idea what the web is about, how to navigate using URL’s, and are mostly lost unless they have an icon to push.
Simple, clear and concise lables and navigation tabs should be the order of the day. Here’s what Mr. Nielsen’s group has discovered.
Getting to Google is Hard
I’m not talking about the challenge of formulating a good query, interpreting the results, or revising your search strategy to reap better results. Those are all very complicated research skills, and few people excel at them.
I’m talking only about the very first step in searching the Web: Getting to your favorite search engine so that you can run a search there.
Would you say this is easy or difficult? Think a bit before reading on.
