Websites without Hierarchical URL structure cause bad user experience?

Do people use address bar as a means to navigate pages within a website?
Yes they do!

Most browsers maintain a visit history and guide users by providing page
suggestions as soon as users start typing using *Auto Complete.* It
provides inputs both from user’s visit history, and some browsers such as
Chrome <http://google.com/chrome> also tries to guess the user’s search
intent by suggesting various options at the address bar itself.

In these cases after visiting pages within a website a user might find a
breadcrumb based navigation present over the page to navigate but then what
if a user has left the website and is back at a later point of time?

Here the user might start typing and will find a page they already visited
might want to see various models of car. With browsers with autocomplete
available users might just start typing *example* or *sportscar1322* and
might get the following

[image: Google Chrome Auto
Complete]<http://seashell.co.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/browser-auto-complete1.png>

next the user might want to navigate to other car models present in the
same website. The visitor might just delete the unwanted part of the URL
and directly visit the page.

e.g in the above case the user will just remove sportscar1322.htmand visit
example.com/cars/ and directly reach the Cars folder or list of cars
directly from here without have to reach the page and then navigate.

[image: browser-auto-complete]<http://seashell.co.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/browser-auto-complete2.png>

But, nowadays I have noticed websites adding pages directly to the root
folder, and then only after opening the desired URL the necessary
navigation is available. In such cases where the website does not maintain
a hierarchical URL structure, a delay is added, and thus amounts to bad
user experience where the internet speed is slow. This also consumes
important internet bandwidth.

Clearly a hierarchy gives a clear advantage over a non-hierarchy. For a
popular website where visitors visit the page very regularly, address bar
based navigation is a clear benefit to the visitors.
-- 
Sincerely,
Ganesh J. Acharya (Proprietor)
Mob: +91-9323193544, Ph: +91-22-28152767
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