Wednesday, March 22, 2017

hyperlinks - Should clicking the logo for a website while on the home page reload the page?


Many websites have their logo near the top which is a clickable link to the homepage. There's some interesting discussion about this kind of button in this question. I am wondering if it's a good user experience to make clicking the logo reload the page while you're already on the home page, or if it should be a link that does nothing.



Answer



In the past, linking from a page to the same page, without a target anchor, was a definite design error (http://www.nngroup.com/articles/113-design-guidelines-homepage-usability/), because it just reloaded the page and nothing else, which is a waste of time and there's an expectation that a link do something more.


But this design error, in the form of the logo on the home page linking to the current page, and similar nav link linking to the current page, has become well engrained in the vernacular of web design to the point where it's often not considered an error these days, although it shows an inattention to detail. If reloading the page accomplished something useful, like updated content, then a link-to-the-current-page is a less egregious error, but if it simply reloads the page it is a definite design flaw.


Generally it's still best to not link to the current page (except for anchor targets), even if it serves as a useful shortcut to page reload. The disabling of logo-home link serves as an indicator that they're already on the home page, so it gives the user useful information and is logically consistent.


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