Navigational Consistency in Websites: What Does it Mean to Users?

A study was conducted to investigate the effects of navigational inconsistencies in websites on users' perceptions and performance. Of four inconsistencies manipulated (position of navigational bar, order of elements in navigational bar, font type and size of elements), only the position of the bar had a substantial effect. However this affected both users' perception of their performance and their actual performance, in terms of the time spent on webpages. The mean time spent on the page with the inconsistently positioned navigational bar more than doubled and this effect persisted over subsequent pages. The methodology developed provides a useful way of investigating the effects of navigational inconsistency, an under-studied phenomenon.