Global Navigation
According to Heidi Adkisson's webdesignpractices.com Global Navigation is defined as "links to a site's top-level categories that occur on every page of the site."
Data below are from 75 leading e-commerce sites, collected in 2002 by Heidi Adkisson and in May, 2006 by KCC|NMA students. We examined the exact same sites that Heidi Adkisson studied in 2002.
Frequency of Global Navigation
Data Comparison: | 2002 | 2006 | 2007 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Percentage of sites with Global Navigation | 97% | 99% | xx% | |
Global Navigation appears to be very popular and effective usability feature that is so common that we have found it to be a "de-facto standard" according to Jakob Nielsen's rules for identifying standards in web design as stated in his article "When Bad Design Elements Become the Standard".
Location of Global Navigation
Data Comparison: | 2002 | 2006 | 2006 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Top | 89% | 85% | xx% | |
Left | 11% | 13% | xx% | |
Main Content Area | 0% | 2% | xx% | |

85% Top:

13% Left
Style for Global Navigation
Data Comparison: | 2002 | 2006 | 2007 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Navigation Bar | 39% | 38% | xx% | |
Navigation Tabs | 43% | 27% | xx% | |
Plain List | 7% | 25% | xx% | |
Pull Down Menu | 5% | 5% | xx% | |
Navigation Buttons | 4% | 5% | xx% | |
As you can see in the above table, the percentage of navigation bars appears to be the same, but the number of sites using navigation tabs has declined since 2002 and in its place are sites that use a plain list for global navigation. On her web site webdesignpractices.com, Heidi Adkisson defines a plain list as "the presentation of links that did not include a different background color or rule line that visually segregated the links from the main body of the page." Please refer to her style definitions page for further clarification.
Link Treatment within the Global Navigation: Link Style
Data Comparison: | 2002 | 2006 | 2007 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
HTML text (not underlined) | n/a | 45% | xx% | |
Graphic text | n/a | 44% | xx% | |
HTML text (underlined) | n/a | 11% | xx% | |
In the above table we decided to expand upon Heidi Adkisson's study to include link treatment for global navigation links. In future studies in the years to come we hope to collect data in this category for comparison.
Link Treatment within the Global Navigation: Link Rollover Behavior
Data Comparison: | 2002 | 2006 | 2007 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
None | n/a | 35% | xx% | |
Change text color | n/a | 24% | xx% | |
Change background color | n/a | 17% | xx% | |
Add underlining | n/a | 12% | xx% | |
Change graphic state | n/a | 12% | xx% | |
In the above table we decided to expand upon Heidi Adkisson's study to include link treatment for global navigation links. In future studies in the years to come we hope to collect data in this category for comparison.