Monday, December 4, 2006

Analysis of Navigational Links on Top 20 Home Pages - Part 1

An analysis of the most common links found on the top 20 university home pages.

Purpose
The purpose of this analysis is to examine the navigational systems used on university home pages, in order to shed light on:
  1. Which links and types of links are most common
  2. Which types of organizational schemes are most common
  3. Which types of labeling and terminology are the most common

This analysis focuses only on navigational systems (e.g, "menus") and not on all of the links on each page. Links to specific news or feature stories, events, specific schools or colleges, video clips, etc. were not included in this analysis.

Methods

For this analysis I counted the number of times a particular link appeared on the 20 home pages. In some cases different terms were used to describe functionally equivalent things (e.g., "Athletics" and "Sports"). In those cases I group the items under the same heading. In addition, I only counted those items plainly visible on the home page; items occurring in pop-up menus were not included in the count (45% of sites used pop-up menus to one degree or another).

I did not always count every single link on each page. There were some links - that I either felt weren't relevant to my goals (e.g., links to specific news and feature stories, privacy policies, "About this Site" links) or that were unique to the specific site - that I did not count. In total I counted 78 different links, and a total of 493 links on the 20 home pages (an average of 25 links per page).

Loosely following Rosenfeld and Moreville's (2002) list of organizational systems, I divided links into one of four types:

  1. Topical/informational - pertaining to specific topics
  2. Organizational - pertaining to the organization of the university
  3. Audience - addressed toward specific audience groups
  4. Task - pertaining to actions and things that can be done

I chose these four types as opposed to Rosenfeld and Moreville's "topic", "task", "audience" and "metaphor" both because I felt that they ignored the fact that many Web sites organize their sites to reflect their internal organization, and because metaphoric organizational systems are pretty much a thing of the past (for good reason). These four types follow those used in my post on the Navigational Structure of the CSU, Chico Home Page.

Defining the types of some links was difficult. Is "Libraries" and organizational link or a topical link? How about "Directory"? I made my best guess and you may not agree

Results

The links that I counted and their relative frequency appear in the table below.

LinkPercent of Sites
Type
Academics100%
Topical/Informational
Research95%
Topical/Informational
Alumni90%
Audience
Faculty80%
Audience
Athletics/Sports75%
Topical/Informational
Libraries75%
Organizational
Contact Us75%
Task
Jobs/Employment75%
Topical/Informational
Students75%
Audience
Staff75%
Audience
About70%
Topical/Informational
Giving65%
Task
Admissions60%
Topical/Informational
Parents60%
Audience
Administration55%
Organizational
Arts/Museums/Culture55%
Topical/Informational
Calendar55%
Topical/Informational
Campus Map55%
Topical/Informational
Directory/Index55%
Topical/Informational
Prospective Students55%
Audience
Colleges & Schools50%
Organizational
Visiting45%
Topical/Informational
Medical Center40%
Topical/Informational
Continuing/Distance Ed35%
Topical/Informational
Email35%
Task
International35%
Topical/Informational
News35%
Topical/Informational
Visitors35%
Audience
Financial Aid30%
Topical/Informational
Friends30%
Audience
Departments25%
Organizational
Diversity25%
Topical/Informational
Facts25%
Topical/Informational
Photos/Video25%
Topical/Informational
Portal25%
Topical/Informational
Recreation25%
Topical/Informational
Student Life25%
Topical/Informational
Tours25%
Topical/Informational
Academic Calendar20%
Topical/Informational
Application20%
Topical/Informational
Campus Life20%
Topical/Informational
Centers & Institutes20%
Topical/Informational
Community20%
Topical/Informational
Graduate Studies20%
Topical/Informational
Health & Safety20%
Topical/Informational
Offices20%
Organizational
Outreach20%
Topical/Informational
Services20%
Topical/Informational
U & Town20%
Topical/Informational
Business & Industry15%
Topical/Informational
Computing15%
Topical/Informational
Disability/Accessibility15%
Topical/Informational
Events15%
Topical/Informational
Find People15%
Task
Housing15%
Topical/Informational
Site map15%
Topical/Informational
Technology15%
Topical/Informational
Patients15%
Audience
Community15%
Audience
Advising10%
Topical/Informational
Catalog10%
Topical/Informational
Courses10%
Topical/Informational
Help10%
Topical/Informational
Majors10%
Topical/Informational
Transfer10%
Topical/Informational
Donors10%
Audience
Bookstore5%
Topical/Informational
Class Schedule5%
Topical/Informational
Collections5%
Organizational
Fellowships5%
Topical/Informational
Human Resources5%
Organizational
Orientation5%
Topical/Informational
President/Chancellor5%
Organizational
Spotlights5%
Topical/Informational
Tranportation5%
Topical/Informational
Tuition/Fees5%
Topical/Informational
Undergrad Research5%
Topical/Informational
Foundations & Corps5%
Audience

Analysis

Far and away the most common type of link on university home pages are topical/informational in nature.

Type Total Percent
Topical/Informational 54 69%
Audience 12 15%
Organizational 8 10%
Task 4 5%

However, when you look at only the most popular links (occurring on 50% or more of home pages), a somewhat different picture emerges. Audience links double in frequency, accounting for 30% of the most popular links, and indicating that audience-oriented links are among the most popular. In fact, 18 of the 20 sites had a specific navigational structures for audience groups.

Type Total Percent
Topical/Informational 10 48%
Audience 6 29%
Organizational 3 14%
Task 2 9%

Other than that, there's no discernable pattern as to the nature of the most common links. Of course Academics and Research get a lot of play, but so do Jobs/Employment which is on a clearly different hierarchical level than the first two.

On the other hand, there is a long tail of links that occur on three or fewer sites, suggesting that there are many different potential approaches in building home page navigation and that different universities have different needs and priorities for their home page navigation.

Discovering and addressing those needs is perhaps the biggest challenge in redesign the CSU, Chico home page.

References
Rosenfeld, L. & Morville, P. 2002. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. O'Reilly. 2nd Edition.

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