blog.philcrissman.com

So, thinking about usability.

There’s no particular intuitive reason why a logo in the header should be a link to the site’s home page. Or on a blog, why the header graphic, which more or less serves as a logo or brand identity for the blog, should be a link to the home page.

Then why do I get frustrated whenever I get to a site where the main header graphic (logo, site name, icon) is not a link back to the main page? (Chris Brogan, this means you, too!)

It doesn’t really matter that there is also a main navigation button saying “Home” right on it. I “intuitively” expect the main graphic or logo in the header to be a link back to the main page.

Note — I said “intuitive”, but it really isn’t. Like I said when I began, there’s no real world analogy which would cause us to think that this would be so. There’s no human DNA or instinct, or even cultural norm (that I can think of), which would cause us to think in terms of what should be hyper-linked and where it should point.

Rather, it’s become convention. A convention so ubiquitous that I think it could be argued that it has become intuitive to believe that the main logo or graphic in a header is also a link to the main page.

I always click on the header graphic or logo, without thinking about it, if I intend to return to the main page. I only look for a “Home” button if this doesn’t work. I admit; it’s ingrained so strongly for me to think that the logo will be the link that I’ll usually click it twice before moving on to look for a “home” link.

In an extreme case, esr’s old blog (I say “old” because the last post was in Summer 2006) did not even have a link of any kind to return to the home page. If you clicked into a single post, you had to either use the back button or (gasp) actually edit the URL in the address bar in order to return to the main page. (Of course, programmers being poor interface designers is a sad-but-true joke as old as computing itself, so perhaps that’s not too surprising.)

So; if the main graphic or logo on your site does not link back to the main page, I would at least encourage you to ask yourself “why not?” Is there some conscious, purposeful, tangible reason why using the logo to link to the main page (even if you already have a “Home” button/link) would be a Bad Thing?

Because if there is no reason not to do it… and if doing it would increase usability for a substantial number of web-surfers… why would you not do that?

Comments welcome!

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen a list of FAQs(Frequently Asked Questions) in years that seemed to have any likelihood of containing actual questions which were really asked with any frequency by the users or visitors of the site or service. It’s basically an open secret that these lists represent the answers that the site owners want to give us; the answers they know, or the things that they believe we want to know, or simply the things that they want us to know.

Those lists need a new name. Something like “Stuff We Want You To Know.” Or, “Things We Paid Our Intern To Write.”

A FAQ list should be exactly that—Questions that are Asked Frequently. Only that, nothing more than that.

• If no one is asking you questions about your site or service, there is no need for a FAQ page.
• If people occasionally ask questions, but they do not ask the same questions, there is no need for a FAQ page.

I want to add more bullet points, but I can’t. That’s it. Someone needs to be asking you questions, and they need to be asking the same questions… frequently... in order for you to need a FAQ page. If you don’t have questions being asked frequently… you don’t need FAQs.

(Aside: when writing the indefinite article in front of an acronym which begins with a vowel sound when spelled out, ie eff-ay-que but with a consonant when read in full, ie Frequently Asked Questions, do we say an FAQ or a FAQ? Is there a grammar for using the indefinite article in front of ambiguously pronounced acronyms? Enquiring minds want to know.)