Interesting Results

Easier Navigation Leads to Increased Web Sales

Many organizations spend a lot of time trying to design their Web sites to be user friendly. 2003 research¹ suggests that such efforts pay off. A study examining the relationship between the ease of navigation, length of site visits, and sales on transaction-based Web sites selling books, music, and travel services over a 20 month period showed that:

The length of visits to Web sites declined the more often a site was visited as a result of visitors learning to use the site more efficiently.
The better a site’s navigation, the faster the length of time per site visit declined as the number of visits to the site increased.
The probability of purchase increased as the number of site visits increased.

¹ Johnson, Eric J., Steven Bellman, and Gerald L. Lohse (2003), “Cognitive Lock-In and the Power Law of Practice”, Journal of Marketing, 67(2), 62-75.