How do most users navigate your site? They Google a site, click the site link from the search engine results to go to the site, and from the site they use the site search to deep dive to their desired content, and from the content page Ctrl-F to find exactly the content on the page. Does this sound familiar? Maybe a tiny bit extreme but it does happen. They may not be using your well crafted navigation system. These power users are bypassing it and powering through to cut to the chase.

I have seen this behavior in usability testing with more experienced high tech users on B2B sites. And my guess is that some version of this is the likely scenario for most high experience users. And, they will use the Back button in lieu of your navigation or right click and select ‘Back’ with greater confidence than the navigation that they won’t get lost. The navigation is there as more of a supporting element for them - a backup of sorts or a prop. It is a fall-back should they lose their way. They would prefer to look to the content area for links to the content - resorting to the navigation as an afterthought.

The likelihood of some of this behavior depends on a number of factors.

• Familiarity with the site. If users have previously visited a site and feel relatively comfortable with it, they are more unlikely to spend time browsing and discovering. They just want what they want.

• Site content can also play a factor in this. The type of content, complexity of content, and the amount of content can determine if users prefer to deep dive versus browsing. A site with too much content on a page or poorly organized content might appear overwhelming and induce searching.

• Non-intuitive navigation labels can throw users off even if they wanted to use it forcing them to search instead.

• Quality of site search may affect the likelihood of a user using the search utility on your site. If they’ve learned from experience that it is not so good, they will avoid it and rely on your navigation system instead.

• People are busy. They have limited time and deadlines and tight windows in which to get things done. They are constantly multi-tasking and multi-site surfing simultaneously. And in the era of search, its just easier and quicker.

Of course, this does not mean that we do away with our navigation systems or spend less time designing the taxonomies for them, it just means that for some users it is just not the preferred mode of navigating sites.