Click here – Don’t tell me what to do!
February 9th, 2010 // 5:07 pm @ Fox
My pet hate is the Click here link that you see plastered all over websites around the world.
I know I have written a post on this topic before – The annoying click here habit, but as I mentioned, it is my pet hate. It drives me crazy and I have to keep griping about it.
Whenever I see a Click here link these days I feel like e-mailing the company and saying ‘NO, I don’t want to Click here’. Don’t tell me what to do, or treat me like an idiot. You didn’t even say ‘Please’.
When you walk into a restaurant, each chair does not have a sign on it that says Sit here. Newspapers do not have a headline on each column that says Read here.
Why?
Because we know what a chair is and what it is for. Likewise we know what a newspaper is and where to read.
WE ALSO KNOW WHAT A LINK IS AND WHAT TO DO WITH IT!
Let’s look back to the origins of the infamous ‘Click here’ link. When the Internet was very new to the world, websites were not a common channel as they are today, Google was yet to be born, and there was no such thing as Web standards, websites were built in any old colour and layout. Usability, accessibility, information architecture and an aesthetic user interface had never seen the light of day. Back then it was not always clear what a link was or what it looked like. It could look the same as the rest of the copy on a page or it may have blinked, animated, almost chased you across a page, or been in 36 point font and red. It was easier for the developer/designer to say Click here so there was no doubt as to which were the links.
Those days are over.
We now have Web standards, best practice, usability, accessibility, information architecture and a knowledge that did not exist then. We KNOW what a link looks like as it is usually a different colour to the rest of the text or it has an underline. We know that when we hold the mouse over it, the pointer turns into a hand and often the link will change colour or underline. We also know that a well designed site is uniform and that links on all pages will have the same attributes and behave in the same manner. This gives us a feeling of confidence and familiarity when navigating around a site.
We also know that if the site is designed and written correctly, that the copy has made it clear where the link is going to take us to, and can see the destination page URL in the status bar. (I did say on a correctly designed site)
If the site is well built, then the navigation is very clear, and the information architecture has left scope for an evolving and growing website within its framework instead of having to pop in Click here everywhere when something doesn’t quite fit.
The link text should be contextual and mean something. Instead of Click here, we can have Read the annual report. Now, doesn’t that read better? A blind person using a reader to read the website out to them will know exactly what that link is about instead of having a leap of faith in where we are trying to take them with a Click here link.
It is amazing how many business websites and even corporate sites have Click here for many of their links. Look for it when you are surfing around the Internet and you will be surprised.
My other pet hate is finger prints on the fridge, but that is another story …
Links – The Annoying ‘Click Here’ Habit
February 4th, 2009 // 1:03 pm @ Fox
There are 1,310,000,000 results found if you search on Google for the phrase ‘Click here’. That is over one billion web pages that use this phrase. Quite incredible!
The use of this phrase started way back when the Internet was new and the general user did not understand how to navigate from one page to another, or understand what a link was. Often links were quite hard to find as they did not necessarily appear as they do now, and the user didn’t understand that you could click on the old blue coloured text to go to another page.
Usability and accessibility concepts were still in the future, so to make it really clear to the user what to do, the ‘click here’ phrase was implemented to identify where a link was.
Click here to view our report
Click here to contact us
Click here to read the case studies
Or my favourite, that one that thinks the user is a mind reader:
Usability, accessibility, search engine optimisation and good old logic came into the fray and it became recognised that the link should have descriptive text to describe where the link goes. Internet users today are savvy and understand what a link is.
Contextual link text are the words contained within the link that have meaning to the user and a search engine. ‘Click here’ does not tell a search engine what the link is going to. The link text is like a sign-post telling search engines such as Google what is on the linked page. In the case of a ‘click here’ link, it is telling Google that the next page contains information about ‘Click here’.
The above examples of links would be better if the click here was removed and the link text displayed:
View our report
Contact us
Read the case studies
If you feel your users are really not that bright and still may not get it, then leave the ‘Click here’ if you have to, but move the link text so that it is descriptive link text.
Click here to view our report
Click here to contact us
Click here to read the case studies
The ‘Click here’ is one of my pet hates. If I am on a website and see this, I leave.