Should a tagline be on all public pages?

Question

I have a tagline that describes my site/business as you can see below. My question is whether this tagline should be on all public pages?

As far as I can see the benefit of it being on all pages is that regardless of what page a user comes in to, the site is described quickly and they have some context.

The disadvantage is that it takes up premium real-estate and possibly pushes some other important stuff below the fold. It is also redundant for users who come in through the home page.

Answer 1

I'd rephrase the question thus: To what extent do I want my users to read the site tagline?
If it's that important then you can do things.
Firstly, you want the user to read it once. Banging the user with a single phrase, many, many times, can be annoying.
So you might display it prominently in top pages (home, landing, ...) and make it much smaller in all other pages.
Or, you might redirect a user who comes straight into a deep link through a landing page with the tagline and a "continue" button that takes them to where they wanted to go in the first time. Or, you can set cookie in the browsers of the users who already saw the tagline, and display it as a fading overlay whenever the cookie is not there (not a flash intro, pleease!).

The idea is that ensuring that the users saw the tagline is one thing, independent of wasting that real estate in each and every page.

What might be more significant is that by posting it again and again you are taking time and energy from your beloved users, both resources you'd prefer that that them used for the activities your site offers.

Answer 2

I don't believe you need to have a tagline on every single page of your site.

From what I've seen, many sites I've came across use their tagline as an introductory header for their home page. www.mint.com is a good example.

I do agree the tagline may help the user understand the purpose of your site more. However, if your logo, content, and imagery doesn't tip off the user already, perhaps the tagline isn't the issue.

Answer 3

I would say this is more of a marketing/branding issue rather than a UX issue.You answered your own question when you said it takes up screen real-estate which could be used for other things. Having the tagline on every page probably does nothing to help the user reach their goal.

Answer 4

I'm inclined to say "yes" but it really depends on how it fits in the design of the site. In the case of your graphic above, if that's all there is to the header portion of the page then I'd say it likely does fit in with the design, but if there is a lot of other content in the header then it could be getting busy and cramped.

In any case above-the-fold real estate doesn't seem to be as important as it once was so the marketing/branding effect of the tagline is probably worth the height it uses (assuming of course that it does fit in with the design).

Answer 5

It looks like you are building a fairly novel service. As such you will of course need to explain it succinctly to users.

Consider if;

• new users will only be arriving via your homepage
• or (like stackexchange) they can enter on almost any page via a search referral or shared link

If the former then just the homepage is OK, if the latter I'd recommend having it on every page.

There's no reason you can't make it less prominent on interior pages.