How Many Design Elements Are Standardized?
To estimate the extent to which Web design complies with interface standards, I compared two studies: my own study of twenty-four features on fifty corporate homepages, and a University of Washington master’s thesis that studied thirty-three features on seventy-five e-commerce sites. Interestingly, despite investigating two different subfields of Web design, the two studies came up with almost identical numbers. I’m thus only reporting the average of the two sets of numbers here. Following are the extent to which websites have standardized on the fifty-seven design approaches studied: • Standard: 37% of design elements were done the same way by at least four-fifths of the sites. Standard design elements included: • A logo in the upper left corner of the page • A search box on the homepage • An absence of splash pages • Breadcrumbs listed horizontally (when they were used) • Convention: 40% of design elements were done the same way by at least half the sites (but less than four-fifths o
