How long has it been since Al Gore invented in Internet? Feels like a century.
That’s about 20 in web years though right?

I designed and built my first site around 1993. And even back then in the web design “dark ages” (no formatted text or tables! Just bold tags, blinking links, and bad backgrounds!) we were linking the logo to the home page. And today, dropping a a link to index.html behind the logo graphic is standard practice in web shops. Yet to this day, I find myself explaining to people that to get home, they just click the dang logo. Is it not intuitive? It seems so obvious - especially now.

Most people get it. I think. But once in a while I still hear “how do I get to the home page?” when pitching a new web design. And I still find myself giving in to clients who absolutely insist that we put a “home” button in the main nav bar.

The thing is, unless you are going to give the user something new when they go back to the home page, why on earth would you want them to go back there? More specifically, why on earth would they want to go back there? Unless of course they get lost when reading all of your staff bios.

I guess I could understand the need for a big fat “home” button if you were building say, a multi-thousand page behemoth site like Amazon.com or Ebay. I could definitely hear that argument being made. “Well” they would say, “the site is just so, you know, ginormous, that I may need to start over again.” Makes sense I guess. Except for the fact that neither Amazon or Ebay have a link to their home page in the main navigation. That’s right - they make you click the logo! Crazy!

Where does the dreaded “home” button show up? Usually on news sites like CNN.com or social networking sites like Facebook. Why? Because in the case of an editorial or news site, there is usually something new to see when you hit the home page. And with Facebook, “home” takes you to your own home / profile page where you can read things said to or about you.

Ebay does use breadcrumbs however. And Amazon puts a link to the home page in their footer. But my guess is that you probably aren’t looking to compete with any of those big boys. If you are, call me.

For the smaller websites though - for the winery, the software company, the golf country club website - I just don’t think you need a link to the home page in your main navigation bar. Seems like space that could be used more effectively. Besides being a waste of space, a home button could actually do more harm than good. One goal for most brochureware should be to keep users digging through your website. Yet a home button actually entices the user to back out. I’m not suggesting that you make it difficult to navigate, but use that nav bar to get people into the content rather back out of it again. If they really need to get home, they could just click the logo.