Looking for finding around URLs

Hello,
Can someone point me to research finding around whether users pay attention to a URL changes?

Quick background info:
I am doing work for a company and there is resistance to having the URL change to much. For example you are on the www.blue.com site and you click on a link that changes the URL to www.red.blue.com.

Keep in mind I am talking about the URL only. What is on the two pages (www.blue.com and www.red.blue.com) would be enough alike that it should not be considered in the question/reseach.

My stance is that a typical user does not pay attention to the URL after they have landing on the site they were looking for (if even then).

Unfortunately a very high level stake holder is convinced that if we have the URL change from the parent site's URL it will negatively impact the user to the point that they abandon what they are doing.

The only way I can convince this person otherwise is with research and data.

Thanks,
Brian

Although the average user barely pays attention to the url, I would - depending on the website, content, and visitors in question - be a bit cautious with changing the url. As a countermeasure to phishing attacks, messages have been spread like "Do not trust content from a website if the url is different", "Only proceed if the url starts with ...".

If the url changes from www.blue.com to www.blue.com/red it is clear that the user is still on the right domain, but I'm not sure whether people would recognize www.red.blue.com as a subdomain of blue.com.

Of course it depends on the character of the website if this is an issue. For a bank or other financial services I would try not to mess with the url, for other domains it might be unimportant.

Regards,

Marielle

This is purely personal, no research, but I have noticed this on a few occasions and with the proliferation of malicious web sites that might hijack one's data entry find it disconcerting. In a few cases, I quickly shut down the page when it produced a different URL that was similar, but odd. There have been those PayPal and eBay emails where the links sorta look like those companies, but are, in fact, fake sites.

I also have serious multi-level security on my home system so I'm probably a ways out on the suspicion curve.

I do think that it is legitimate issue. I would worry more about this if there was any personal data entry involved or a request for sensitive information. If the URL was to an informational site, my level of diligence is not that great.

There is an edited book titled "Security and Usability" that was mentioned in a recent post. It might be worth looking through that. The other source might be organizations that focus on Web security. Are there any white papers on the McAfee site since this is an issue, for example?

Thanks,

Chauncey

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 6:05 AM, McLaughlin Designs info at bmclaughlindesigns.com wrote:
Hello, Can someone point me to research finding around whether users pay attention to a URL changes? Quick background info: I am doing work for a company and there is resistance to having the URL change to much. For example you are on the www.blue.com site and you click on a link that changes the URL to www.red.blue.com. Keep in mind I am talking about the URL only. What is on the two pages (www.blue.com and www.red.blue.com) would be enough alike that it should not be considered in the question/reseach. My stance is that a typical user [trim]

Brian asked:
"Can someone point me to research finding around whether users pay attention to a URL changes?"

Can you describe the users? If they are not particularly web savvy, it may be worth pursuing your gut feeling on this. I don't know specifically of any research looking at user's awareness of URL's or use of URL's for orientation, but I can suggest you dig into the available research in two areas:

1) Eye-tracking data for web sites. Eye-tracking heat maps of web pages may demonstrate how much interest most users have in the URL.

2) Research on web-site identity and user orientation. This research should point to cues including the logo, page title, the breadcrumbs, the major sections including the one showing with selected state, the background and general visual treatment, and the URL.

Older research in this area summarized by HFI: http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/aug99.asp. HFI probably has some newer and relevant stuff also summarized in their Technical Material.

Good luck! Let us know what you find.

~ Paul Eisen
Principal User Experience Architect
tandemseven

I'd like to hear more about why the URL needs to change. It seems to me that this could possibly represent a larger, structural problem (on the business process/corporate side) that is manifesting itself as a need to change a URL. If there are internal branding/hierarchy issues that are causing you to feel as if the URL needs to change, those may need to addressed before the execution on the web happens.

I think there are probably plenty of ways to get around the URL changing, unless you see a clear business need to do so. How come you're interested in it changing?

Justin Davis

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 5:05 AM, McLaughlin Designs info at bmclaughlindesigns.com wrote:

Hello, Can someone point me to research finding around whether users pay attention to a URL changes? Quick background info: I am doing work for a company and there is resistance to having the URL change to much. For example you are on the www.blue.com site and you click on a link that changes the URL to www.red.blue.com. Keep in mind I am talking about the URL only. What is on the two pages ( www.blue.com and www.red.blue.com) would be enough alike that it should not be considered in the question/reseach. My stance is that [trim]