Users Notice Neither Navigation Tools Nor Gorillas

Henrik Olsen summarizes some studies about web user behaviour, conclusing that users don't notice navigation tools but solely the content (via Oliver Wrede). In fact, user don't notice anything not related to their task, not even a gorilla:

A study carried out by Daniel Simons at Harvard University illustrates this phenomenon very well. A number of volunteers watched a 30-second video starring three basketball players wearing black T-shirts and three wearing white ones. The viewers were told to count the number of passes made by one of the teams. Halfway through the film, a man dressed as a gorilla jumped into the middle of the picture, beat his chest at the camera, and walked away. Afterwards the viewers where asked whether they had seen anything unusual. Astonishingly, only a very few put their hand up. The rest had been so fixated on counting the passes that they completely missed the hairy interloper.

The same holds for web pages, Olsen concludes:

It seems to be an inescapable fact that users are highly goal-driven and tend to ignore navigation tools. Instead, they focus on the centre area, and hit the back button if they can't find anything that will take them further.

The findings suggest that navigation should be a prominent part of a website. Instead of being discrete appendices separated from the rest of the site, navigation should be integrated into the site and make sure that users stay in the flow.