Prioritizing the Links on the Homepage: Evidence from a University Website

Abstract

A common problem encountered in Web design is how to arrange the homepage links of a Website. Previous empirical studies have not complete systematic guidelines to resolve this problem. This paper uses a random-utility theory for studying visitors’ choice behaviors to prioritize the links on a homepage. We propose a total of three multiple-choice demand models and apply them to clickstream data collected from an educational institute over a seven-and-a-half month period. The model with the best performance is selected as the tool for constructing a metric, utility loss. Empirical results show that the proposed metric is highly efficient for prioritizing the links on a homepage and the algorithms can also be used to study the feasibility of introducing a new function in a Website.