De Facto Web Standards

November 06, 2003

Anyone that uses the web on a semi-regular basis will begin to notice things that seem to be "standards" online. Things like orientation of navigation (left vs. top), location of search or log in, the use of the site logo for the home buttom are some examples of such de facto standards.

The problem with user experience especially when working with clients or peers is that everyone has a perception of what is a standard. Without any imperical data folks will argue until they are blue in the face that it is a de facto standard for main navigation to be rendered in graphics or that log in should not be located on the far left. A recent article by Heidi Adkinsson with Blink Interactive Architects on Boxes and Arrows sheds some light on the subject.

In Heidi's article we get a glimpse of some initial data on what is a standard on the web and to what degree that a perceived defacto standard is real. In the study conducted at the University of Washington items ranging from the use of the logo as a home button, top or horizontal navigation, and (my personal favorite) text vs. graphics for main navigation links were examined.

Some of the results were quite telling...

Characteristic & Frequency (of sites)

Logo (upper left corner) linking back to the home page 100%

Horizontal placement of top level category links 87%

Text for top navigation rendered as graphic 76%

Breadcrumb navigation used on site 45%

Despite the numberts presented, Heidi also noted that 70% of the ecommerce sites surveyed did not use many of the design principles that were examined (excerpt above). This leads to the question of where should we derived web standards from. In many cases UXP folks, including myself, look to Human Interface Guidelines from Apple and Microsoft. The theory behind this is that people take their apriore knowledge from applications and operating systems and apply them to web. While this can be helpful, the web also has subtle differences that do not easily lend itself to the use of UI theories from a dektop interface metaphor.

Read the full article >> (pop-up)