Where do you place your logo? The latest news from web gurus Nielsen Norman Group is that users are far more likely to remember logos in the traditional top-left position on a web page than on the right.
NNg researchers tested hotel websites to see if the placement of the logo made a difference to users’ ability to remember the name of the hotel.
"The average lift in brand recall was 89% by having the logo on the left instead of the right. This is one of the biggest differences we have seen in user-experience metrics from such a small layout change."
We shouldn’t be surprised. Conventions really do help users of websites. They reduce the amount of thinking needed to understand a website and use it efficiently.
Users expect the layout to follow a certain pattern: text reading from left to right and top to bottom (unless your language goes a different way), main navigation at the top, search box (if you have one) top right and so on.
Many web designers want to make their work stand out, and therefore to break conventions. But, interestingly, in the NNg test the websites that used an unconventional layout, logo on the right, did not appear more stylish or special to the users, nor did they affect the users’ perception of the quality of the hotel.
So by all means let’s break conventions; how dull it would be if we didn’t. But it’s worth thinking first how much it might cost.
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