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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 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 > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
