Centered Logos Hurt Website Navigation

Traditionally, websites display a logo in the top left corner of every page (for sites that use left-to-right languages). This design pattern fulfills several critical needs for a good web user experience: Communicates the current location . Displaying the company logo on every page lets visitors quickly understand which site they are currently viewing. Telling users where they are is essential on the web, where a single click often teleports you to a completely different organization’s site. Reinforces the brand . The more often users see a logo, the more likely they are to remember the brand. (This is one of the laws of human memory, as explained in our...
A comparison of 14 fashion-retail websites found that, when the site logo was left aligned, users were more likely to navigate to the homepage with a single click — a frequent task that is critical for users who become lost. (Lower bars are better.) As mentioned above, the ability to quickly return to the homepage is critical for users who become lost or simply want to switch to a different task or topic. Even when global navigation is shown on every page and lists all major sections of a website, many users still go ‘home’ by reflex when they want to start over. On most of the sites