[Sigia-l] What Matters in Nav Bar Usability

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

Without proper information about the underlying data for the tests, I'd be
inclined to ignore the evidence presented here.

For example, they say the IBM test raised "... site section engagement by
over 219% at more than 99.9% confidence." Not only is that
an astronomically huge win that immediately raises alarm bells (most such
tests that produce uplifts do so around the 5 to 50 *basis point* range),
but without being able to know what "engagement" means, whether the sample
was statistically significant, or what the stop rule was, a 99.9%
confidence interval is meaningless. They don't even say if there was a
control (in fact they imply there wasn't, but perhaps it's always the A
version). I therefore have some suspicions about the whichtestwon.com site
they take the examples from. For one thing, I find it pretty hard to
believe that a company like Urban Outfitters would casually publicise the
fact that they discovered a UI change that raised conversion by 144 basis
points!

Even with the data, and assuming it was sound, I'd be surprised if you
could replicate most of these tests unless you are looking at competing
sites. When I've done my own investigations on this, I've been surprised at
how what works in one context doesn't necessarily work in another.

Jonathan




On 18 June 2013 21:54, Tom Donehower <tdonehower at gmail.com> wrote:

> Great article about usability of nav bars. Some strong evidence here about
> the "hide and seek" nature of Mega dropdowns that Jared Spool mentions and
> how on-page links can help dramatically improve engagement.
>
>
> http://designm.ag/resources/what-really-matters-in-navigation-bar-usability/
>
> Best,
> --
> -Tom
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