SV: [Sigia-l] logo as link to home

[Christopher Fahey [askrom]]

It has been made clear that many users will not assume the logo is a
link to the home page. But I hope that this does not encourage designers
to *not* make the logo a link to the home page. We also know that some
users *will* click the logo to go home, and there's no reason to deny
them that power. It's not like the users who don't assume the logo is a
link to the home page would assume that it is a link to somewhere else
(Has anyone tested for that assumption? Do the users who don't think of
the logo as a "home" link think it's a "contact us" link or something?).

I have been frustrated by this myself, actually - moving my mouse over
to the logo only to find that it isn't even a link at all and that I
must go to the "Home" option in the global navigation. Fitt's law tells
us that a big target is a good thing, why not exploit the logo?

Another consideration is that for many web sites the Home page is
actually not an important page to which the user will want to return
over and over again. For example, the home page may merely be something
like a splash page while the rest of the site's key features are all
clearly accessible from the main navigation bar. For such a site, the
designers may wish to intentionally de-emphasize the home page as a
navigation option in order to drive users to the other main navigation
options.

It seems to me that the logo should almost always be a link home, but
that the main navigation should in most (but not necessarily all)
instances include a redundant "Home" link. An acceptable compromise is
to have the logo include the word "Home" in it.

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
art: http://www.graphpaper.com
sci: http://www.askrom.com
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com