Do you really need a back-to-top button?

Has it ever happened to you, that you wanted to get back to the top of a website but you weren’t able to as the back-to-top button was missing? When a page is really long, it can be a painful exercise to scroll back to the top.

Users normally want to get to the top of the page to

• Access filtering and sorting features
• See the navigation menu and choose a new destination
• Enter or edit a query in the search field

A back-to-top button seems to be the obvious solution, however, not in every case. Let’s see if you really need a back-to-top button and in which cases you can avoid it.

Navigation at the bottom of the page

If you have navigation and search option at the bottom of your page, then a back-to-top button is unnecessary.

Sticky menu

If your website has a sticky menu that displays the navigation and other functionalities when users scroll up, the back-to-top button can be saved.

Security systems, pop-up panels

If you have a security system like reCAPTCHA installed on your website, which appears in the same bottom right corner as the back-to-top button, then think twice if the back-to-top button makes sense. Perhaps a sticky menu would be a better solution.

However, according to case studies, over 60% of the users use the back-to-top button to navigate on websites. So if you add a back-to-top button to your website, make sure:

• To add it to pages only that are longer than 4 screens. For shorter pages, the button may disturb the user experience.
• The button is added to the lower right side of the page.
• The button is labelled as Back to Top.

What you do need for your website

Try to avoid not having any options for an easy navigation and getting quickly back to the top of the website. Not having a sticky menu or a back-to-top button is a no-no. Your website visitors will be frustrated with the difficult navigation and it’s likely that they will abort your page. We don’t want that. In fact we want them to stay as long on your website as possible and to provide a good user experience.