Where should the home button go?

Posted in User Experience

Recently I was on a website that had no visible means of returning to the homepage from a subpage, even the logo was not a link. Then I began to wonder how much of a role the “home” button played in the major leagues. So I set out to review the top 10 sites according to Alexa.

LostHere are my findings, broken down by each site and in the order of their popularity by Alexa:

  1. #1 Google. Getting back to the homepage on Google is rarely needed because of the search bar built into literally every page of the site. Because of this, there really is no “home” button, rather the logo in most cases leads back to the homepage.
  2. #2 Yahoo! The homepage is filled with more content than the Times. Rather effectively, almost every subsection of the site has a “Yahoo” homepage link, and usually in the exact same top-left position.
  3. #3 MySpace. Upon launch this site was a user experience nightmare. Now it seems like they have switched gears and really unified the navigation system and even have a “home” button.
  4. #4 YouTube. The main navbar remains mostly consistent throughout the site (has a “home” button) and only disappears on specific pages with just the logo to return to the homepage.
  5. #5 Facebook. This site has probably the most consistent navigation so far, it has a “home” link and the logo also doubles to reveal a “home” icon as well. It would be interesting to know how many of their users click on one over the other.
  6. #6 Windows Live. This search engine has a pretty simple-straight-forward navigation. Similar to Yahoo, it also uses it’s name to act as the “home” link.
  7. #7 MSN. Although the site has a somewhat consistent placement of the “home” link, it’s awkward place on the page (top right)  leads me to believe it is rarely used. Plus, when navigating different sections of the site, the site resizes and we see more prominent placement of sectional “home” links which undoubtedly cloud the users judgment (in some cases, under the logo, there were “home” links for the current section and sub-section, see example).
  8. #8 Ebay. This site has a pretty consistent placement of the “home” link, it’s typically in the breadcrumb under the header. The only exception is on the Ebay Motors page and a couple of other places. I should mention that once on the Ebay Motors page, you have to search to find your way back to the Ebay homepage (especially because the logo no longer takes you back to it).
  9. #9 Wikipedia. Not that you would really need to, but there really is no way of getting back to the “homepage” on this site. The functionality of the homepage is instead built into the left hand navigation throughout the site, which is fine, but why then have the homepage?
  10. #10 Craigslist. There’s not much to say about the design, but the logo does always take you home except when you are looking at classifieds which only links back to the city you are under.

Ok, so now we have taken a good look at the top 10 websites and paid attention to how each of them overcame the location of the “home” button challenge. Now let’s take a quick look at the statistics:

7 out of 10 of the sites consistently used the logo to go home.

7 out of 10 have the “home” link located in the top left, consistently.

6 out of 10 actually use the word “home” in the link.

So what does this tell us? Well it shows how important the home link is to the top 10 and how consistently it is used. Honestly, I am suprised at the consistency. I wonder how true it stays past the top 10. Guess that’s another post.

One Response to “Where should the home button go?”


  1. February 5th, 2009 at 7:02 pm


    [...] Go here to see the original: Where did the Home button go? [...]

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