Itqualityassurance
- Do people use the back button?
- How many users use the back button?
- What happens when we press back button in browser?
- Why is it important to not make viewers rely on the browser's back button to navigate your site?
Do people use the back button?
From my usability testing experience and observation, people still use the BACK button and it is important to keep that in mind when considering the interaction of the site.
How many users use the back button?
Usability studies have shown that 60% of users rely on the back button as their primary means of navigating around the web (source: Usability Interface). In fact, several studies have shown that the back button is second only to clicking on links as the most used feature on the web (source: Web Usability research).
What happens when we press back button in browser?
A back button in the browser lets you back-up to the copies of pages you visited previously. The web browser's back and next buttons work well with web sites that provide information that changes infrequently, such as news and shopping web sites.
Why is it important to not make viewers rely on the browser's back button to navigate your site?
The reason it is never ok to break the back button is, that the user may need to click the back button multiple times to go back past your page and possibly end up on a page which isn't even part of your app. (I consider it a design flaw in the browser, that it is even possible for a webpage to break the back button.)
