The role of content in addition to hyperlinks in user-clicking behavior

Abstract

Motivation -- Cognitive models of web-navigation such as CoLiDeS, CoLiDeS+, SNIF-ACT compute the correct hyperlink by using information from the hyperlink text alone and ignore all other information on a web-page. This paper focuses on verifying the validity of this assumption by investigating the role played by the main content in addition to hyperlink text on the deciding the correct hyperlink. Research approach -- A mock-up website with two conditions: (i) with main content and hyperlinks and (ii) without main content but with hyperlinks was created. 18 students performed 8 information retrieval tasks on this mock-up website. Findings/Design -- The results showed that the user-click behaviour with or without main content remained largely the same. The same links were selected by users in both conditions. Also, the same amount of time was spent on the commonly selected links in both conditions. Research limitations/Implications -- We restrict ourselves to the role of main content in this experiment and did not study the impact of other factors like pictures. Originality/Value -- These results provide an empirical proof to the assumption CoLiDeS makes in its 3rd and 4th phases of focusing and selecting. Take away message -- Implication of the results is that one needs to study deeper the relevance/quality of wording used for hyperlinks in relation to the main content. We assume that if the wordings (of the links) are relevant or familiar to the user, the influence of main content would be negligible but if they are less relevant or unfamiliar, the content becomes more influential.