Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here”

uxmovement.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 93 posts

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

#61

Post by revelation »

crazygringo wrote: post #32

This is a fantastic article, and the first time I've ever come across anything addressing these issues. The only thing I don't entirely agree with is: 1) Wrong: "first Falling Bear gets run over " 2) Right: "first Falling Bear gets run over" I think they're just different. In the first case, I expect a link to to a photo of Falling Bear as he's getting run over. In the second case, I expect a link to a page on Fallin…

I think Wikipedia has done a first class job of destroying peoples trust into "nouns as links". They mention a blog entry in a Wikipedia article, but of course clicking blog just takes you to the Wikipedia article on blogs, instead of the actual blog in question (which you then have to find through the references).

Guaranteed confusion every time.

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

#62

Post by shaggyfrog »

crazygringo wrote: post #30
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…

To paraphrase Torvalds, you've been brain damaged by standard Windows button UI.

Mac OS X takes the approach of labeling buttons with action verbs instead. This makes scanning dialogs much simpler; with Yes/No/Cancel, you have to carefully read the dialog message (and hopefully the text is clear) so you make the right choice; or you sometimes make the wrong choice since nearly all dialogs use Yes/No/Cancel and your brain didn't do branch prediction properly.

In your case you are annoyed since perhaps you know exactly what the app is going to do and you don't want the extra 500ms overhead, but for your Average User, clearly defining a button's action is better.

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

#63

Post by shaggyfrog »

SuperChihuahua wrote: post #18

Ive begun writing "Press here" and not "click here" since you cant really click with the ipad/iphone - lets see how that turns out

I can think back to the age of onion belts and when "press" was the dominant verb form to refer to activating a button; I'm not sure when that changed.

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

#64

Post by danso »

revelation wrote: post #61
crazygringo wrote: post #32

This is a fantastic article, and the first time I've ever come across anything addressing these issues. The only thing I don't entirely agree with is: 1) Wrong: "first Falling Bear gets run over " 2) Right: "first Falling Bear gets run over" I think they're just different. In the first case, I expect a link to to a photo of Falling Bear as he's getting run over. In the second case, I expect a link to a page on Fallin…

I think Wikipedia has done a first class job of destroying peoples trust into "nouns as links". They mention a blog entry in a Wikipedia article, but of course clicking blog just takes you to the Wikipedia article on blogs, instead of the actual blog in question (which you then have to find through the references). Guaranteed confusion every time.

I bet the more common and more frustrating experience has been the ad services that auto-inject hover-ads into common nouns, such as "loans" or "books"

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

#65

Post by einhverfr »

ArcticCelt wrote: post #39

The problem is that the article seems to give advices based on the personal opinion of the author and has no data to test his theories. By testing different versions on my web sites I often got better results from "ugly formulations" like "click here to order" than something "pure" that has no call to action. What I found was the most important is that the context must be clear and descriptive of what the user will f…

I think this may be an important point, but it makes me wonder if "click here to order" would be less effective than "order today." Certainly the latter contains a call to action and perhaps a better one. Again it's a question but one which I have not studied in terms of user behavior.

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

#68

Post by crazygringo »

walexander wrote: post #52

Bad advice, in my experience. Anecdotally, I did a website recently for a carpet cleaner. Standard wordpress job with his services and things. At the top of the home page, he wanted a link to a form for redeeming living social coupons, which, not wanting to say "Click Here for", I just made as "Reedem Living Social Coupon". It turned out after a couple weeks that many of his users were not clicking "Reedem Living Soc…

I think the article applies to "normal" website content, e.g. body text, articles, etc.

Landing pages, big call-to-actions, etc. are a different beast entirely. Especially because it's not always obvious what's a graphic or a link, what's a headline or a link. "Click here" makes it obvious, which is necessary when dealing with anything is not "standard" page content.

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

#69

Post by re_todd »

walexander wrote: post #52

Bad advice, in my experience. Anecdotally, I did a website recently for a carpet cleaner. Standard wordpress job with his services and things. At the top of the home page, he wanted a link to a form for redeeming living social coupons, which, not wanting to say "Click Here for", I just made as "Reedem Living Social Coupon". It turned out after a couple weeks that many of his users were not clicking "Reedem Living Soc…

Maybe it was too much text. Once you get over 2 words, the less it looks and feels like a button to someone in a hurry. "Reedem Living Social Coupon" may have just been too long, maybe "Redeem Now!" may have been better.

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

#70

Post by Evbn »

einhverfr wrote: post #65
ArcticCelt wrote: post #39

The problem is that the article seems to give advices based on the personal opinion of the author and has no data to test his theories. By testing different versions on my web sites I often got better results from "ugly formulations" like "click here to order" than something "pure" that has no call to action. What I found was the most important is that the context must be clear and descriptive of what the user will f…

I think this may be an important point, but it makes me wonder if "click here to order" would be less effective than "order today." Certainly the latter contains a call to action and perhaps a better one. Again it's a question but one which I have not studied in terms of user behavior.

The former is a simpler more immediate action that is easier to induce.
Post reply on HN