You have a logo beautifully designed. Good game. Now what do you do with it?
Once your high quality logo is designed and ready to use, it should appear on all your branded materials, including your WordPress site. Generally, there are three schools of thought that have different thoughts as to where a logo : in the top-left, top-middle, or top-right corners of a page.
So this raises the important question: what position is ideal for your logo?
If we think strictly on the basis of UX logic (user experience), your logo should appear at the top left, and there are two reasons for this:
- For those of us with a native tongue that reads left to right, our eyes will naturally look left first.
- In the early years of web design, logos were always on the left, which is why most people assume they should be on the left.
Despite what logic says, there are some sites that have eschewed the norm for their logo placements and preferred to put it on the center or right corner of a Website. Would a unique placement for your logo better match your brand identity?
Let's take a closer look at what studies show, and we'll see if the left is really a good location for your logo.
Where can you place your logo: What the experts think
According to Nielsen Norman Group, Logos have three purposes on modern websites:
- They remind the visiteurs where they are. In other words, what site am I on?
- They allow easy navigation to the home page, as most websites no longer include a "Home" button on the navigation menu.
- They help with brand recognition as the logo always stays there at the top of the site, and sometimes even follows the visiteurs as they scroll down the page.
Knowing this, the " NNGroup Asked if there really was an ideal location for a logo. Here's what they found:
Left or right
In the study from left to right, the NN group tested and observed the response of 128 users. Similar to an A/B test, each user was presented with a single version of a Website: either the original with the logo on the left or that of the NN group has manipulated in order to place the logo and the navigation on the right.
They gave users a minute to review their version of the Website. They then asked a series of questions and showed photos of 10 hotel websites. This test aimed to establish what type of effect the location of the logo generated with regard to brand recognition.
Here are the results:
Left aligned logos result in a larger brand reminder. Specifically, the average mark reminder for the left-aligned logos was 39%, versus 21% for the right-aligned version.
Left-aligned logos are more likely to be labeled in a fairly unique way. Despite the traditional placement of a left-aligned logo, subjects were still more likely to label a left-aligned logo as "unique" and "stylish" compared to one that appeared on the right.
Left or Center
The Nielsen Norman Group conducted additional study to find out what happens when users have been exposed to a centrally aligned logo. They performed two different tests to determine the viability of a centered logo.
Unlike the A / B test done between the right and left aligned logos, this first survey allowed 50 users each to have a website they needed to interact with. Eight of these websites had a centered logo while six had a left-aligned logo. They were then asked to complete different tasks that would test their ease of using the navigation and return to the home page.
This was the result:
Left-aligned logos are better for navigation. In the study, only 4% of users fail to return to Home with a single click when the logo appears on the left. When the logo was centered, however, 24% of users failed to get there with one click.
In the second of these tests, the NNGroup presented 128 users with five different hotel websites. Four of the featured websites displayed variations of a logo on the left or center, while the fifth site featured a right-aligned logo. Users were then asked a series of questions to determine brand recall.
Here is the result of the investigation:
Branding is unaffected by the difference between left or center logos. Despite presenting users with variations of the same logo in different places, the brand recall was inconsistent in this comparison between left-aligned and centered logos.
Summary of the results: left vs. center vs. right
After reviewing the results of the logo placement studies, it appears that the logic prevails:
The left is the best location
Here's why:
Many people don't think of looking in the right corner of a website for a logo, and brand recall can be seriously compromised as a result.
Many people are conditioned to look for navigation in one of the top corners of a site, so placing a logo and / or navigation in the center causes more confusion in the navigation process.
In summary, left-aligned logos are ideal because they are located exactly where the eye will naturally go to look.
Remember that the primary concern of a web design should always put user experience first. While a centered logo might look elegant, it's probably not ideal if you have more than one page on your website (And you wait for people to visit those other pages). The same goes for a logo aligned to the right. It may seem that you are giving your site a unique advantage, but you can undermine the reminder of your brand in the process.
It's also important to keep in mind that it's not just the location of the logo that matters. Logos should be exported in a high quality file format, created using a legible font, and positioned above white space so that background images, shadows and the colors do not overshadow it.
That's all for this tutorial, I hope you now have how to place your logos. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.
