Should the logo always link home, and does anyone still expect that?

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Yes, link the logo home by default, and yes, people still expect it. This is one of the few web conventions that has held firm long enough to become a reflex: a user who wants to return to the start clicks the logo in the top left almost without thinking, because every site they have used has taught them it works. The logo is not just branding sitting in the corner; it is load-bearing navigation that users rely on, and honoring that expectation costs nothing while breaking it quietly strands people. So the answer is a confident default of yes, with only narrow, deliberate exceptions.

The reasoning is that conventions earn their keep by being predictable, and this one has been reinforced for decades across nearly every site on the web. When a behavior is that consistent, users stop checking whether it applies and simply act, which is the whole value of a convention, it lets people navigate on autopilot and spend their attention elsewhere. The dismissal that “the logo is just a graphic, it does not need to do anything” misreads what the logo has become. It is the universal home button, the escape hatch from anywhere on the site, and a user who clicks it and gets nothing experiences a small failure of trust, a moment where the site did not behave the way every other site does. Meeting the expectation is free; violating it spends goodwill for no gain.

A concrete case shows the reliance. A visitor three levels deep in a product catalog, unsure how they got there and wanting to start over, does not scan for a “Home” link, they click the logo, because that is the move they have made a thousand times. If the logo is inert, they hesitate, then look for another way back, and the site has made them work for something that should have been automatic. The pattern is so ingrained that even users who could not articulate the rule still perform it, which is exactly the sign of a convention worth honoring rather than testing. Testing it gains nothing, because no user is delighted to discover the logo does something unusual; the upside of a working logo is invisible, and only the broken version gets noticed.

The honest exception is that the default bends in deliberate, focused flows where leaving the page is a risk, not a courtesy. In a checkout or a multi-step signup, the goal is to keep the user moving forward, so a header may strip out navigation entirely and the logo may be made non-clickable to avoid an accidental exit that abandons the cart or loses progress. That is a reasoned exception with a clear purpose, not a casual choice, and it is narrow: it applies to a contained flow, not to ordinary pages. Outside such cases, dropping the link because the logo is “just branding” has no reason behind it and simply breaks a behavior users depend on.

When you build a header, wire the logo to the homepage as a matter of course, and treat any departure as something you have to justify. If you are inside a focused checkout or onboarding flow where keeping the user in place is the point, you may disable it, but document why. Everywhere else, honor the expectation and let the logo be the home button people already believe it is.

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