The Usability of Persistent and Non-Persistent Headers on Web Pages

Abstract

Websites are used for many different purposes and can also be designed in different ways with different styles. Certain website designs use persistent headers, while some alternatively use non-persistent headers. Online guidelines give ideas on how these are best used. However, there is no published systematic study investigating the performance and user satisfaction of these types of headers. In this paper we present an empirical experiment where persistent headers are compared with non-persistent headers. Two prototype news websites varied only in terms of their headers were developed and used in the experiment. The basic results suggest that persistent headers are more usable, particularly on a slightly larger screen. The analysis indicated that performance and user satisfaction are increased with the use of persistent headers on websites.