Why web visitors rely on the back button and how breaking it hurts your site's usability

Dear website champions,

We often obsess over navigation menus, buttons, and site architecture—but there's one navigation tool your visitors use constantly that you might be overlooking: the humble back button. (The back button may not be the most glamorous part of web navigation, but neither are parachutes until you really need one!)

Your visitors rely on this browser staple to navigate your site just as they do everywhere else online. When it doesn't work as expected, your site feels broken and frustrating—often without visitors understanding why.

Why would the back button break? It happens more frequently than you might think. One common culprit: opening links in new tabs or windows. While this might seem helpful ("I'm keeping them on my site!"), it actually creates confusion:

Imagine a visitor clicks a link to another site. If it opens in a new tab, and they want to return, they'll instinctively reach for the back button—only to find it grayed out. Most users, even relatively tech-savvy ones, won't immediately understand what happened. They'll feel disoriented and often simply leave. This problem is even more pronounced on mobile browsers, where tab management is less intuitive.

Another instance where a back button can break is during multi-step processes like decision trees, where technical decisions can result in the back button no longer working. When testing your site, make sure it behaves as expected at each step. If technical limitations make this difficult, at least provide a clear way for users to restart or return to a known point, rather than leaving them stranded between steps.

The back button is absolutely part of your website's navigation system. Your visitors depend on it working predictably, just like they expect your logo to link to your homepage and your "About" page to contain information about you.

Here's to smooth navigation for all,

Laura