Thread

I’m seeking some feedback on a design situation I have recently encountered with a client.

This particular client claims that she never uses her browser’s “Back” button. Therefore, the site design must assume that no one will use the “Back” button. To this particular client, that means each product page (the core of the site is a catalog of products) should have Prev/Next product links so the user never has to go back to a list of products, among other things.

While this individual may never touch the “Back” button, it is my belief that most web users still use it with abandon. Most users arriving at a product page by way of a list of products will instinctively use the “Back” button to return to that list.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m completely in favor of building easy-to-navigate sites and providing more than one way for a site user to “skin a cat,” so to speak. But am I wrong in assuming that, in certain situations, the “Back” button is the best and most common means of returning to the page from whence you came?

Thoughts?
Comments?

For some users, the “Back” button is really something that has lost its appeal. And I can understand this because of the frustrating results especially lesser experienced users must have when trying to use the “Back” button on highly dynamic sites and a lot of so called “Web 2.0” portals. There, the “Back” button often has lost its usefullness or leads to completly unexpected results, irritating browser warnings and so on.

So, when I first read the headline of your post, I thought you would ask if Web 2.0, AJAX and thus have killed the “Back” button.

But regarding your main question: I would always design websites and navigation in a way that the user isn’t forced to switch between the on-page navigation and the browser controls. It is great if the later works as expected, but I wouldn’t rely on it and on the user to understand that he needs to switch to another logical plane of navigation.

My 0.02$
-Markus

Hardly dead, and (IMHO) still the most-used button in a browser.

I use the back button constantly. However, I almost never click the actual button since my mouse has its own button that triggers the back button functionality.

Please, don’t kill my back button.  Thanks.

Perhaps the best way to change the mind of a client making odd decisions on the UI would be to have the client do user testing.  Have her set her Mom, Dad and some random people in front of the computer and use the site.  You can’t argue with the users of the site.  If they want to use the back button then you simply have to accommodate them.  I am sure the experience would do wonders to her assumptions that nobody will use the back button.

I’ve come across this too, and the fact is that many people don’t know about the browser’s ‘back’ button. Nor do they think they can print a page unless there’s a ‘print’ button on the page or change the size of the font without another button on the page. Don’t know how many times I’ve had to explain and guide people through the preferences of IE (which most people use and I hardly know!). We’re far from having compurate users, even though ‘everyone’ has a PC at home (at least in my country).

Of all the people I watch using a web browser nearly all of them use the Back button. With dynamic AJAX type “Web2.0” (uuuurgh) sites I’ve also seen their extreme frustrations when the Back button doesn’t take them where they expected.

Yep, I have worn the ink off my back button.  Maybe your client should distribute a modified version of Mozilla with no back button to see if it will take off.  Then there will be no excuse because visitors won’t be able to use something they don’t have.  Until then, the back button will get used.

I hate breaking standards though.  People are so trained to the back button, why try to train them to something different?

I love the back button. Actually, I don’t really care for it, but I use it all the time. I can easily state the most common source of frustration in Web2.0 sites like GMail, is the inability to use the back button.  I can’t say how many times, when going from one label to the other, then wanting to go to the previous label, I hit the back button. Ughh! I hate that!

It’s hard to argue with “it can’t hurt to provide an alternative,” but I resist trying to recreate browser functions—-like onClick=‘history.back()’ or ‘add this page to your favorites’—-on the web page.  Using a browser is a part of viewing web sites.

Clients are always very concerned about how a visitor is going to get to the next page.  To counter that, I try to get clients interested in showcasing the content on a page and not trying to provide a hundred different ways to leave the page.

I didn’t mean to imply that my client wanted to disable the “Back” button. They just want additional, redundant navigation that will require a bunch of unneccesary, redundant coding that, in my opinion, 97% of users won’t ever use.

To my way of thinking using your logic, 97% of people won’t use them, but 3% will!

My mum will tell you its alive and kicking!

I know this isn’t going to help any but I can honestly say I have never ever used a back button in my life.

I always (On Mac) Apple-Click on links to open them in new windows, I’m not afraid of pop-ups and I always use key-strokes for everything although I suppose in that respect you could say that I sometimes use the back button although I never actually press it!! 😊

Best wishes,

Mark

Like Mark, I use keyboard shortcuts but essentially that’s just using the back button without a click. And I do it thousands of times a day. 😊

each product page… should have Prev/Next product links so the user never has to go back to a list of products, among other things.

To me, if I’m interpreting this correctly, this is where your client is going astray. It seems to presume that a person will go sequentially through the products. Certainly wouldn’t happen with me, I’d be back to the list and cherry picking exactly what I want to view. Not to say having next/previous buttons and potentially a breadcrumb trail for added options wouldn’t be good though.

———
Little related side story…
While doing user testing on a very large ecommerce site, we had people do certain tasks - find a certain product for example. Everyone generally did it the way we expected with just a few minor variations. But, one gal went about it in such a random, round about way we couldn’t even keep track of how she did it - even though we were watching - without reviewing the tape five times and even then it didn’t make any sense to us and we couldn’t believe she actually managed to find the product. We gave her the same assignment again - different product/category - and this time she did it entirely differently, still not like the others. We repeated this four times with her using a different approach each time.