2 ms·

Because a large, complex site can be intimidating to navigate, it's always desirable to have an easy way to return to the home page from anywhere within the sit

by lutusp 13y ago

Because a large, complex site can be intimidating to navigate, it's always desirable to have an easy way to return to the home page from anywhere within the site's structure. This avoids the problem of people getting so lost and frustrated that they bail and go somewhere else. But you know, you can establish this for yourself by performing an A/B test, one with, and one without, a home link on each page. See which design holds onto visitors longer.

tempestn 13y ago
I agree that there should be an easy way to get home from each page. That's why it's become standard to have the logo link to the homepage. The question is whether enough people are aware of that convention to dispense with the additional Home link in the navigation. True that we could test it, and we may well do so, but there are a lot of things we'll want to test about the new design, so we want to aim as close to optimal as we can to start with.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > I agree that there should be an easy way to get home from each page. That's why it's become standard to have the logo link to the homepage. The question is whether enough people are aware of that convention to dispense with the additional Home link in the navigation. How about having the logo tag have a title field that says "Go to home page" as well as changing the cursor to a hand? This will prompt users who hover over the icon without taking up room in the layout.
  - tempestn 13y ago
    Both good things to do, but they don't really solve the problem IMO. In order for any kind of mouse-over effect to work, the user has to move the mouse up into the corner and mouse over the logo. If they're doing that, they probably already have a good idea that the logo goes somewhere - likely the homepage. I'm wondering what percentage of people have no clue about that and would be likely to just get to your homepage however they got there in the first place (probably Google) if they can't see an explicit "Home" link. I expect this depends a lot on the audience though.

by lutusp 13y ago

tempestn 13y ago

I agree that there should be an easy way to get home from each page. That's why it's become standard to have the logo link to the homepage. The question is whether enough people are aware of that convention to dispense with the additional Home link in the navigation. True that we could test it, and we may well do so, but there are a lot of things we'll want to test about the new design, so we want to aim as close to optimal as we can to start with.

lutusp 13y ago
> I agree that there should be an easy way to get home from each page. That's why it's become standard to have the logo link to the homepage. The question is whether enough people are aware of that convention to dispense with the additional Home link in the navigation. How about having the logo tag have a title field that says "Go to home page" as well as changing the cursor to a hand? This will prompt users who hover over the icon without taking up room in the layout.
- tempestn 13y ago
  Both good things to do, but they don't really solve the problem IMO. In order for any kind of mouse-over effect to work, the user has to move the mouse up into the corner and mouse over the logo. If they're doing that, they probably already have a good idea that the logo goes somewhere - likely the homepage. I'm wondering what percentage of people have no clue about that and would be likely to just get to your homepage however they got there in the first place (probably Google) if they can't see an explicit "Home" link. I expect this depends a lot on the audience though.