Do we still need a ‘home’ link in the top-level navigation? It is a long established custom to have a link to a website’s homepage included in the top-level navigation, but why do we do this? Is it really a good idea? And can a website work with a home link in the top-level navigation?
A number of websites have been doing away with the traditional ‘home’ link in their top-level navigation. A couple of examples include apple.com, johnlewis.com and facebook.com all lack a link saying ’home’ in the top navigation. So where did the home link go? And how do you get home in sites that lack a ‘home button’? Well, it is a fairly well established convention that clicking on the logo takes you back to the website’s homepage, and many sites rely on this to let users navigate back to the home page. Other sites use a breadcrumb, which is typically a horizontal line of text providing links back up through levels of the site up to the home page. Breadcrumbs typically look a bit like this:
Home page / Section page / Subsection page
The John Lewis site is a good example of how breadcrumbs work.
You could argue that having a ‘home’ link on the home page doesn’t make much sense. Imagine you’re driving down a road, let’s say it’s the M4 motorway, and there is a signpost for the M4, next junction. But you’re on the M4. Pretty confusing. Who wants to go to a page they’re already on? But in real terms, I don’t think this confuses many people.
Others websites, including www.bbc.co.uk, lastminute.com, myspace.com and vgroup.com have kept home link in the top-level navigation. On these sites users have the same set of top-level navigation available wherever in the site they are. Considering a large proportion of users arriving at a website will not be arriving on the home page, perhaps it makes sense to have this link in the top-level navigation.
Certainly the last few sites I have designed have had a home button in the top-level navigation, but I think it’s worth considering whether it is really necessary.