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In the main navigation menu of a website, should we call "Home" something else?

I am guessing that from a broad UX perspective, the answer is no -- but when are other names viable? When are they necessary? For example, I find that for some corporate websites, "Home" may sound too warm.

Is there any research on the matter? What have you noticed with your users?

For example, alternatives include: "Index", "Start", "Intro", "Homepage", "Startpage", "Beginning", "Introduction", "Main", "Mainpage", etc. -- one does see a few of these around (especially on multi-lingual sites).

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    possible duplicate of Creative alternatives for word 'Home' on a web application
    – Benny Skogberg
    Commented Nov 28, 2012 at 7:10
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    I saw that, but the question asked there was concerning: "social network applications that implies as a default space/ a living space or a place where all the updates gather"
    – Baumr
    Commented Nov 28, 2012 at 11:29
  • I'm asking with user research in mind as well -- if that wasn't clear, any suggestions? Thanks
    – Baumr
    Commented Nov 28, 2012 at 12:07

3 Answers 3

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enter image description here

To label your 'Home' page, use

  • Home
  • Main
  • Main Page

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web is the place to start learning information architecture. There's a whole chapter on labels, which is where I got my answer.

Good luck!

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    I didn't downvote, but it probably was because on all stackexchange sites, answers with just a link are not considered answers: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8231/…
    – Marjan Venema
    Commented Nov 28, 2012 at 6:47
  • Thanks Marjan. I'd like to point out that I checked the links in the other posts and they don't have a definite answer. This is the answer provided in the book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites. This 100% answers your question. The other answers don't have the same credibility.
    – Tyler Langan
    Commented Nov 28, 2012 at 6:54
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    That may be as may be, but if you want your answer to be acceptable on these sites, you will need to include at least some summary of what the article behind the link talks about and in that provide some keywords that can be used for searching. Link rot is a real problem and SO/SE need to be able to stand on their own two feet.
    – Marjan Venema
    Commented Nov 28, 2012 at 7:02
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    You haven't provided the reasoning for why these labels are appropriate. OK, it might be covered in the book but you can't expect people to go and read the whole book to understand what your answer means. Can you summarise the relevant information from this book and then cite the book as the source, that would be a more useful answer. Also regarding the downvote - there is no requirement for anyone to say why they downvoted. Yes, we would encourage people to say why they downvote, but they don't have to because voting is anonymous.
    – JonW ♦
    Commented Nov 28, 2012 at 8:45
  • "Main" may be good in such corporate cases -- does the book say anything about user recognition?
    – Baumr
    Commented Nov 28, 2012 at 11:32
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I'm pretty sure this was answered before in one of the following resources:

So there you go, have a look!

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  • Thanks! The first link was helpful (but a different context). I've seen some of the otters before (some not, thank you!), but I'm also asking whether user familiarity matters in this case of language use. I'll also try to clarify that this is in a case where the logo isn't the only navigator to the homepage
    – Baumr
    Commented Nov 28, 2012 at 11:27
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This is interesting. I don't know whom the first one is used Home in English websites, but I think it is brilliant. So change it as other names is not a good way, because most users are already very familiar with this expression, and as you said, it is warm for them. But you know, some other non-English websites, like Chinese websites, we use "first page/mainpage" (translation) instead of "home", since it cannot just be translated home into Chinese, it will be confusing users.

I think your question is mostly like could we change those stuffs which users are already very familiar.

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