I recently read this article on Ux Magazine that is about the Home button presence in a Website.
In the article there are indicated three ways to return Home in a Website architecture:
- home link
- bread crumbs
- clickable logo
More than one way is better
WHY MATCH THEM
Yes, we can use all of these to help users to find the way. But only one of these is the better way to express the action of beginning a new interaction. For me, only the home button can do this.
It’s hard to imagine a project where it’s used only one of the other two patterns to communicate the return to Home.
You see Home, but it doesn’t exist
WHY BREADCRUMBS ARE NOT ENOUGH
If we use, for example, only the breadcrumbs, we can seem inconsistent. In the breadcrumb string in fact, it’s visible a navigation level that it’s not explicitated in the information architecture (home level). This could get the user confused.
If we have a home button too, this has to be represented in the breadcrumbs, to preserve a consistence. This is a correct design.
Not all standards are standard
WHY THE LOGO LINK IS NOT ENOUGH
The clickable logo is an habit for the users, but the visual image used for cannot be a standard. An example of interaction (and visual) standard can be fot identified by the saving icon, for example, that is represented with the same visual and the same meaning in every application.
Every site has different logo, instead, so different visual.
Having the button home can mean for the user:
- confortable and easy way to restart the navigation
- failure reversibility (when he gets lost)
- way to check last update (news in a magazine, and offer in a e-commerce)
Are we sure that we want to lose it?