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You should follow me on Twitter

dustincurtis.com

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Re: You should follow me on Twitter

#31

Post by TravisLS »

I suspect (with no evidence whatsoever) that the increase from linking "here" was because people felt clicking the link would complete the action rather than just take them to twitter.

I wonder what the effect would have been had you used: You should follow me on twitter.

Re: You should follow me on Twitter

#32

Post by Elepsis »

guicifuentes wrote: post #12

This is not about this article in particular, but there has been a lot of news about Twitter these days here in HN but really, do they deserve this relevance and attention?

I realize you said you weren't talking about this article in particular, but really, the fact that this happens to mention Twitter is entirely peripheral to the point.

Re: You should follow me on Twitter

#34

Post by wooby »

In Nielsen's "Designing Web Usability" I remember him frowning on the use of "here" and "click here" as links. Since around 2000, when I first read the book, I heeded his advice.

  For more information: click here
  To sign up, go here
were cardinal no-nos, if I remember correctly.

But it looks like everybody else uses this technique, and the average web surfer is more likely to click give the redundant area to click on.

Maybe people are just more comfortable with "click here" when the links lead to an undefined word, like Twitter. Would it be true to say that most people on the web don't know what Twitter is? Do most of Curtis's visitors know what it is? If most of his visitors don't know, are they clicking on "here" because it's a more comfortable link given Twitter is undefined? While each of his test cases vary in wording, the first 3 are all alike in that twitter is the only word hyperlinked.

My theory is that people are less likely to click on hyperlinks if the hyperlinked text or word is something they don't know about. If you're talking about a brand name, service, or anything not general knowledge than you're better off with "click here."

Re: You should follow me on Twitter

#36

Post by derefr »

dcurtis wrote: post #25
abossy wrote: post #20

Why did you link the word "Twitter?" My impression upon seeing that is that the link would take me to twitter.com, not perform a follow action. I would wager that the third message would fare better than the fourth (of the examples you gave) if you rephrased: You should follow me on Twitter to: You should follow me on Twitter

I tried exactly what you describe. The conversion for "follow me" as the link during my one test was 9.22% compared to the "twitter" link, which was 10.09%. I'm not sure why it performed (very slightly) worse. It might have to do with the link being in the middle of the sentence (you have to go back and click the link) rather than at the end, where you finish the sentence and click the link.

Or perhaps people thought they really were going to get the Twitter home page, but then thought "eh, may as well since I'm already here..."

Re: You should follow me on Twitter

#37

Post by jeffesp »

jodrellblank wrote: post #33

He opens with "I spend a lot of time thinking about how to improve user experiences", so where in this are you thinking about the user experience? Why do I want to be influenced to follow you on Twitter?

In this case I would say the goal is improved user experience through further contact with the author. As in, how can I increase the ease of doing something that _I_ want the user to do? It is debatable whether this is actually improved experience, but I think that's how the UX people look at these things.
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