Navigation Configuration and Placement Influences the Visual Search Efficiency and Preference

As the basic and ubiquitous elements of interfaces, navigation is used to search target information items. Many prior research has shown that how does the navigation placement influence users' visual search efficiency and preference, and owing to the format of navigation is hierarchical navigation in most of e-commerce websites today. So designers need to consider about the navigation configuration. To investigate the effects of navigation design on users' experience in e-commerce websites, we performed an experimental study to better understand what kind of two-level hierarchical menu layout users preferred, and two factors we controlled were configuration and placement. These data indicate that the manual placement could significantly influence users' preference. And the influence of configuration is significant with navigation placed on the top or left.