On e-commerce websites (e.g. Amazon), I noticed that the main navigation bar is not displayed any more when the user proceeds to checkout. Why?
If the user wants to go back, he can only do it by clicking on the 'back' button of his browser or on the logo of the website which is not that obvious for the lambda user.
Is this really user-friendly?
Answer
The question that was not asked directly:
Should we hide the main navigation in the checkout process?
Yes, we should hide it.
A merchant wants to hide the main navigation mainly because of the conversion rate (ratio between people entering the checkout process and the ones actually finishing it). For average users the checkout process can still be relatively complex. That's why we want to reduce visual clutter/noise and anything that could distract users from completing the checkout process.
Is this really user-friendly?
If the assumption is that the user wants to finish the checkout once they navigated there then the answer is also yes. But there are different opinions on this topic. I personally do not believe that users always want to navigate around, especially not if they entered the checkout process. And I do believe that users know how to use the browser back button.
There is some research about this topic. One is the Baymard 2011 checkout usability report (unfortunately not free). On page 66 their conclusion is to hide the navigation during checkout.
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