Navigating by index and guided tour for fact finding

The primary mechanism for navigating a website consists of pages with lists of links (or indexes). Such indexes are most effective when they convey the necessary hint (or scent) to anticipate the content they point to. When indexes fail to do so, users who are seeking specific information need to click on a link just to explore where it leads to, and then go back to the index to select another item. In a study with 150 participants, we explored whether guided tour navigation -- which enables users to linearly browse items without going back to the index -- could outperform scentless indexes in fact-finding tasks. Our results suggest that indexes remain a better solution than guided tours, even when lacking information scent. Guided tours, however, improve user's performance when the target content is found in the first half of collection with 20 items. Implications for designing effective navigation patterns are discussed.