A Dynamic Navigation Guide for Webpages

Abstract

Navigating websites is often a frustrating process: Website visitors, despite their widely varying and individual information-seeking needs, must contend with static, general-purpose link structures that have been set in place by website owners. Because many visitors tend to browse for the same content, they are individually repeating the same navigation activity. Visitors would benefit from being able to take advantage of the collective search and discovery work that has already been performed by other visitors. Although many attempts have been made to improve website navigation by tapping into the “wisdom of the crowds”, the currently available approaches suffer from maintenance, usability, and user interface integration issues. We present a navigation guide for websites that provides visitors with helpful suggestions based on their browsing activity and the browsing activity of prior, similar visitors. Our navigation guide does not require any downloads, can be easily added to websites by website owners, and automatically remains up-to-date.