Searching within Websites: A Comparison of Three Types of Sitemap Menu Structures

Abstract

This study compared search performance and satisfaction with three types of sitemap menu structures. In one type (Index), the hyperlinks were organized alphabetically. Another type (Full) organized hyperlinks according to a specific category. The third type (Restricted) initially presented only category topics, and displayed the respective hyperlinks after the user clicked on that particular category. Results indicate that although users did not perform significantly better with any of the sitemaps, they were significantly more satisfied and found the searches to be easier with the Full and Restricted sitemaps than with the Index sitemap. In the ranking of the three sitemaps, the Full sitemap was most preferred,