A Study on Web Page Layout and Navigation-Bar Locations for Product Exhibition on Different Platforms

With the advent of electronic commerce, it is common for consumers to search product information and place orders on the World Wide Web. Some research has indicated that the information search behavior of consumers has changed drastically due to the characteristics of non-traditional shopping environments. It is clear that customers will not benefit from the web sites that are developed based on traditional ergonomic criteria and constructed without considering the new patterns of behavior. To address this issue, the objective of this research is to study the influence of page layout and navigation bar locations on Web page usability. At the first stage of this research, we studied web pages for product exhibition from several companies with diverse product lines. The second stage of this research included four experiments. The first experiment studied the effect of page layouts on different platforms. The second and third experiments studied navigation bar locations on different platforms. The last part studied the information search patterns of participants. Using factorial design, questionnaire survey, operation observations, and log file studies, the data were collected for analysis. The result showed that list format of product exhibition was appropriate for all platforms. However, it was not appropriate to present product information in tabled layout on the PDA platform. In addition, to facilitate Web page usability, site navigation on top and within-page navigation at left are the best locations for navigation bars. Furthermore, based on the result of behavior analysis, we concluded that if the architecture of web pages is properly constructed, the performance would not degrade even with different search patterns. These guidelines ensure the usability of web sites for product information exhibition. With reduced information overloading and workload, consumers can improve the efficiency of browsing Web pages.