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Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

uxmovement.com

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Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#21

Post by tokenadult »

Even though the advice is from 2004, useit.com's article "Guidelines for Visualizing Links"

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html

appears to offer more user-friendly advice (perhaps because it is based on more thorough usability research) than the advice in the article kindly submitted here.

The Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design" article

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

(updated 2011) says one of the top ten mistakes is "3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links." I have to agree.

Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#22

Post by larrys »

citricsquid wrote: post #17

I think this example ( http://uxmovement.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/clickhere_n... ) is absolutely awful. Many websites style text in many ways, if you're going to refuse to have "click here" (or any other call to action) then you absolutely must stick to common patterns: links being blue and underlined.

Not to mention that many things (even if styled correctly) that look like links are actually those "vibrant" pop up ads.

Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#23

Post by chrisguitarguy »

JangoSteve wrote: post #14

I agree with almost everything in this post, philosophically and intellectually. However, any usability study I remember seeing on this subject has always concluded that "click here" converts better. So until they back up any of their suggestions with data, this article gets relegated to pure brain fodder. Edit: And I'm sure conversions would probably also depend on the demographics of your user base, so I'd be inter…

Here's a few links on the "click here" subject:

* http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30124 * http://www.copyblogger.com/click-here/

If you look at what a lot of content marketers (inbound marketers, if you like) are doing, you'll see a lot of "click here" type stuff as well.

Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#24

Post by lotharbot »

It's more than just links. Anything you want the user to interact with should be self-explanatory.

Buttons shouldn't say yes/no or ok/cancel. They should describe the actual action. "Leave this page" or "stay on this page", "Remove from cart" or "keep in cart", and so on.

Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#25

Post by gms7777 »

djbender wrote: post #16
JangoSteve wrote: post #14

I agree with almost everything in this post, philosophically and intellectually. However, any usability study I remember seeing on this subject has always concluded that "click here" converts better. So until they back up any of their suggestions with data, this article gets relegated to pure brain fodder. Edit: And I'm sure conversions would probably also depend on the demographics of your user base, so I'd be inter…

How do we change these behaviors if we don't lead users to it as an industry? Do you want to make the web a better place or just raise your conversion rate? I don't know if there is a "right" answer.

I think its pretty arbitrary to claim that "changing these behaviors" would "make the web a better place".

I think if people think and react in a certain way, there is nothing wrong with that, and web design should evolve around how people act as opposed to the other way around.

Then again I don't work in either any sort of UX or web development, so maybe I should keep my mouth shut here :)

Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#26

Post by [deleted] »

sp8 wrote: post #20

I'm surprised that no one appears to have mentioned the main reason I was always taught not to use "click here". From W3C: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-facilitate-navigation "Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context -- either on its own or as part of a sequence of links." This is especially true when you consider users who use screen readers.

[deleted]

Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#27

Post by notatoad »

dchest wrote: post #8

Did the author A/B tested this?

Nope. Nothing on uxmovement is ever backed up by any data, just vague assertions. The worst part is that they always frame their articles as "why X is true", but then the article is essentially "x is true because x is true".

Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#28

Post by rhizome »

will_work4tears wrote: post #15

I've been a firm "eye-roller" at this idea for a long time. My boss often uses terms like "call to action" and has me change text because he feels it might "confuse" people. I do it, don't get me wrong, but I give an extra strong roll with my eyes as I'm doing it. I get that there really are dumb people out there, but if "submit" confuses you when you are "submitting an application" (of which the button is "submit yo…

"Send" and "Save" are just fine in the majority of cases. Simple language.

Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#29

Post by kalleboo »

I was going to mention SEO and use the example of googling for "click here", but I was surprised how the wikipedia article on the phenomenon in the OP ("Mystery meat navigation"[1]) actually managed to make it to #3, amidst downloads for Acrobat Reader, QuickTime, Java runtime etc. How did Google manage that? I'm impressed.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation

Re: Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

#30

Post by crazygringo »

lotharbot wrote: post #24

It's more than just links. Anything you want the user to interact with should be self-explanatory. Buttons shouldn't say yes/no or ok/cancel. They should describe the actual action. "Leave this page" or "stay on this page", "Remove from cart" or "keep in cart", and so on.

I'm not convinced -- I find the Vista dialogs really confusing for that reason.

First, I read the question, "Do you want to save this file?"

Then I naturally expect "Yes", "No", "Cancel" -- effortless to understand.

If I see "Save this file", "Don't save this file", "Return to application", it takes a lot longer, because I have to parse each button, which is redundant and annoying since I' already parsed the question.

The only time I've found longer button names to be useful are in rare non-intuitive situations, like when copying files into a directory with files of the same name, and there are multiple options you can take.

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