UX for Beginners

Chapter 43. Users Don’t Go Backward

It is really common to imagine your users navigating back to the page where they started or using the back button to find what they need. It is also really wrong.

User Motivation Is Rare, Not Common

When most people imagine users using their design, they imagine them reading all the text and checking every menu item and navigating right to the bottom of the site to find what they need.

If a user were being held hostage and had to explore your site under threat of waterboarding, they still might not be that thorough. If the user isn’t finding what they want, every extra click a user makes increases the odds that they will leave your site.

That includes clicks on the back button.

Users Only Go Backward When Confused or Lost—That’s Bad

You might think of your site as a tree with several branches, but users only think about the navigation options they can see right now or those that they have already used.

If a user clicks the back button, it doesn’t mean they are going “up a level” to retry their last decision. It means they have no fucking idea what to do. In a user’s mind, the back button is the “abort” button or the “nope” button. If, during user tests, you see users hitting “back” a lot, it means they are not finding what they want. And since you are probably sitting there watching them, it probably means that they would leave the site when they are alone.

Make Loops If You Want Users to Go Backward

When I say a “loop,” I mean something like this:

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