Hmm, at the moment on <a href="http://cascade.io/" rel="nofollow">http://cascade.io/</a>, their company logo IS at the top (as well as bigger below the fold), it's just on the right instead of left, and not linked.<p>Which seems perfectly reasonable.... but it contradicts with the OP says, it's not actually only below the fold.<p>What am I missing?
We pay no attention to "rules." Our logo has been in the footer for 4 years. Traffic is up and revenue has doubled every year to 7 figures. We don't A/B test, so I can't attribute our growth to this, but it is a nice little anecdote.<p>Edit: We have an old fashioned "Home" link at the top of the site.
This feels like an overly strong assertion based on one piece of anecdotal data. Saying that you played with this and got good results in one case is different than saying you've done experiments for multiple different startup marketing pages and consistently those pages without a logo at the top perform better.<p>Google is one of the most intensive A/B testers in the technology space, and on every logged out page of Gmail and Google Drive and Google Calendar, guess where the logo is?<p>Edit: I would add though that the argument around communicating the "Why" is more important off the bat than the "who". That said, having a minimalistic logo in the top right or left won't likely distract them for very long - unless there's evidence of that?
Re: Logo Positioning.<p>Depends on the product. If your logo is a trusted brand, then displaying it front and center drives up sales. If it is unknown, then display it under the fold.
<i>> Furthermore, rather than merely assuming I met my goals, I used analytics. Every metric shows that my design is successful.</i><p>Does this mean that, for example, the green button was A/B tested against the blue?
Newspapers have played around with this on their (paper) front pages:<p><a href="http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=CA_AD&ref_pge=gal&b_pge=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=CA_AD...</a><p>Putting "refers"/"hot boxes" above the logo to indicate some of the more interesting content inside.
Not to break up the design rebellion but the green button signup button gradient could've been done in a more appealing manner that would've retained the implied business goals.
A top-left logo, linked back to the root page, is part of the design language of the web.<p>I suspect a proper A/B test, of users attempting to complete common tasks (as per Jakob Nielsen's usability tests), would find customers slowed by the logo's absence.<p>But by all means, collect the data. (I don't see data here except for an assertion that the overall page design works. Well, maybe, but test the specific suggestion.)