Thus, it is likely that our findings for logo placement might also be mirrored, causing the best logo placement to be on the right. For example, these users scan down the right side of the text. (Our user testing in countries with right-to-left scripts has found that many of the traditional web-page layout guidelines are mirrored, as one might expect. Users were significantly more likely to recall the hotel name when it was presented on the top left, compared to logos presented in the top-right corner. This is one of the biggest differences we have seen in user-experience metrics from such a small layout change. The average lift in brand recall was thus 89% by having the logo on the left instead of the right. The brand recall was as follows, averaged across the 4 sites we tested: This difference was statistically significant (using a chi-squared test to compare the number of times the brand was recalled for left vs. We compared the real Hudson hotel website (on the left) with our manipulated version (on the right).įor every design we compared, we found that more users remembered the brand name when it was displayed on the left side of the page, rather than the right side.
right logo placement used images like the ones shown below: the real website for the Hudson hotel on the left, with its left-aligned logo, and our manipulated version on the right, with the logo and navigation flipped to the less conventional right-side placement. People were significantly more likely to remember the name of a hotel when the logo had been positioned in the top left corner of a website, compared to in the top right corner. In total, 128 users participated in the study, which we ran with UserZoom (one of our preferred remote user-testing services).Īs you’ll see below, placement definitely does matter, at least if you want users to actually remember your brand. (This type of aided recall test is commonly used in market research to assess advertising effectiveness.) Finally, users were presented with a list of 10 hotels and asked to select the ones they’d seen and rated in the earlier questions.Users saw 5 different websites (in a randomized order), and subsequently answered some unrelated demographic questions (to minimize the recency effects that may have improved their memory of the last seen site).Users looked at each website for about a minute, and rated their perception of whether the hotel was welcoming, unique, stylish, and somewhere they would like to stay.For each site, users were randomly assigned to see either the actual website design, or a version we manipulated to change the position of the logo and the navigation to display on the opposite part of the screen.To find out if there are actual consequences to nonstandard logo placements, we compared user reactions to 4 different hotel websites:
It’s easy to see how a designer might decide that conforming to traditional web guidelines is less important than creating a unique brand experience by using an unusual layout.īut before committing to this course of action, you should make sure you know exactly what you’re giving up. If you were to show users the website above and ask them what the name of the hotel is, they’d be able to figure it out. Does Placement Really Matter?Ĭlearly it’s possible to disregard the standard for top-left logo placement and still end up with a reasonable website. The website for the New York Edition hotel breaks web conventions by placing the site logo and navigation on the right edge of the page. For example, the website homepage shown below for the New York Edition hotel mirrors the traditional layout and displays both the hotel name and the navigation menu on the right edge of the page. Violating this convention seems like an easy way of immediately distinguishing a design from its competitors, and standing out from the crowd. (They also spend more time looking at the left side of the page overall.) Right-Aligned Logos Thwart Web ConventionsĪ left-aligned logo is comfortable for users, but because it’s such a longstanding tradition, this standard is a tempting target to anyone wanting to appear unconventional.
A lot of research indicates that speakers of left-to-right languages look at the left side of the page first and often the first page element they attend to is the logo. The logo serves as a landmark that orients users when they first land on a page and helps them identify the website they are visiting. Showing a logo in the top left corner of a web page is probably the most common design pattern of all time.