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I've run a lot of usability tests and I'm puzzled as to why some designers still use 'click here to' as a link with the subject of the action following the link.
Does anyone have any anecdotal or hard evidence supporting why this is a good thing to do?
If not, what problems have you seen it cause?
I'll summarize the responses after a week of comments.
Ron
Ron Perkins
Principal, Design Perspectives
Web Design and Usability
www.DesignPerspectives.com
978-465-6083 Office
Ron,
This will be a great head start for you:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009 /07 /28 /designing -read -more -and -continue -reading -links /
(make sure you check out the comments below the article - quite a few insights in there)
Suze Ingram
User Experience Consultant
suze.ingramat gmail.com
@suzeingram
http://suzeingram.blogspot.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/suzeingram
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I wish I still had the link, but a while back someone did a study on this and found that most users actually do click on things that say "Click here" more often than links that do not use that verbiage.
Hopefully someone here can chime in with that study.
Nick
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There are a number of reasons, actually, and I think attributing them to "some designers" is a bit on the flawed side.
"Click here" resolves to Adobe as the most popular search result in Google, btw:
But, back on topic. The problem that this causes, ultimately, is a rather bad SEO problem. Good, descriptive links help keep that link "juice" internal to your site, as opposed to say, throwing more at Adobe's Reader (or today's # 3 "clickhere.com" ).
The other issue, however, is that often content is the last thing to be considered in a website—and I think we've all been there. So, a designer, who perhaps doesn't have much context for the content and is using a lot of FPO copy, does something fairly logical by labeling the calls to action on the page with "click here to...". When copywriting comes around, it's often not written by folks who have written for the web and text link calls to action get little or not consideration.
Your experience, of course, may vary.
--Russ
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A slightly different case, but nice writeup suggesting that "here" at the end of a link works better than not:
http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html
Josh
On Aug 10, 2009, at 6:44 AM, Russ Unger wrote:
There are a number of reasons, actually, and I think attributing them to "some designers" is a bit on the flawed side. "Click here" resolves to Adobe as the most popular search result in Google, btw: http://www.google.com/search?q=clickhere &sourceid=navclient -ff &ie=UTF -8 &rlz=1B3GGGL _enUS311US311 But, back on topic. The problem that this causes, ultimately, is a rather bad SEO problem. Good, descriptive links help keep that link "juice" internal to your site, as opposed to say, throwing more at Adobe's Reader (or today's # 3 "clickhere.com" ). The other issue, however, is that often content is the last thing [trim]
It's also an accessibility problem, too. If someone is using a screen reader, a site with "Click here to see latest news", "Click here to browse jobs", "Click here to download our annual report", and "Click here to sign in" will be mind-numbing at best.
Even worse is when there is no actual descriptive text associated with the link. For example, if the browser displays "for the latest news and events, click here", the screen reader will only pick up on the "click here" and there won't be any inclination of where the link will go. Yes, the title attribute may help, but only if it accurately describes the destination of the link.
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In web applications, I've seen "click here" used often to overcome other design problems within the page, including:
The "click here" is sometimes added after observing users who tell the practitioner, "I didn't see that link there". That should clue the designer to correct the above problems, but usually, adding "click here" does (almost) the same job, so folks don't tackle the tougher issue.
Usually (tho not always), reducing the amount of "copy" on forms and process-pages, and clearly isolating calls-to-action resolves the problem without having to add "click here" to everything.
That's just my experience, having redesigned several corporate web applications where "click here" is very popular.
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Is "Read more" any better?
Even when the links were treated visually as discrete, actionable links?
I'd like to see that study, too — I'd bet that many of those links were buried in paragraphs of text, and that users were scanning madly for something actionable.
(IMO, "click here" is something that should be weeded out of a given interface. There are better verbal and design-based methods of directing a user to possible actions.)
-Anne
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 2:43 AM, Nick Sergeant nick at nicksergeant.com wrote: I wish I still had the link, but a while back someone did a study on this and found that most users actually do click on things that say "Click here" more often than links that do not use that verbiage. Hopefully someone here can chime in with that study. Nick Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44472 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list . discuss at ixda.org Unsubscribe .... http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help http://www.ixda.org/help
-- Anne Hjortshoj | anne.hj at gmail.com | www.annehj.com | Skype: anne-hj
"Click here" links are neither usable nor accessible, for various reasons.
Because "click here" has some interesting properties (e.g. it almost ALWAYS appears within links and hardly ever in ordinary text), I think you can use it as an indicator of some systemic issues within an organization.
See my short article on using "click here" as a metric (and what to do with the results) in the 'Insighter' newsletter: http://bit.ly/J9ej8
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"That's the way it always has been done."
I have found it to be the case that many best practice fallbacks like this come from the early days of web/app design. Because it was a new experience for everyone, a lot was dumbed down. I would not jump to the conclusion that designers are the ones making this choice. I still rail against this in work with those who think the general public is too dumb to know how to use a computer. If a child can figure out how to turn a page in a book without clearly written instructions, why do we continue this?
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