ARTICLE SUMMARY: By a show of hands, how many of you designers use the hyperlinks ‘Click here’ or ‘Learn more’? By a show of hands, how many of you designers use the hyperlinks ‘Click here’ or ‘Learn more’ exclusively or excessively? That’s not a good idea for a number of reasons.
I turns out there are better ways to help your readers ‘Learn more’ than sprinkling ‘Click here’ buttons throughout your website and there’s a boatload of research to back this up.
In Cynthia Marinakos‘ article “THE PROBLEM WITH “CLICK HERE” AND “LEARN MORE” LINKS” she puts together a good list of reasons why we should be more creative when it comes to redirecting readers on our websites. She discusses the problems that arise when you use the ‘Click here’ or ‘Learn more’ for hyperlinks and how to avoid them. Some of the main reasons for not using them are
- It slows your reader
- It creates risk and uncertainty for readers
- It assumes our readers are clicking
With the amount of websites on the internet designers need to be aware of how much time it takes the user to decide whether to stay on your site or move on, and we know it doesn’t take long. When designing websites we want to give our audience the best friction free user experience possible while eliminating or at least minimizing any excuses for them to leave early.
Cynthia Marinakos goes into great detail on how to be creative when it comes to using hyperlinks and how to present them to your visitors subtlety. She also provides, you guessed it, links that will give you great tips on writing hyperlinks.
Cynthia Marinakos finishes up by telling us “Many of us have used repetitive, meaningless link phrases such as ‘Click here’ and ‘Learn more’ leaving our readers unsure about what to expect. We slow them down and risk wasting our efforts. Our SEO may suffer. We may also lose sales, leads, participants, or the opportunity to build a community. Most of all, we’re not helping our readers. Keep this in mind whenever you’re writing a hyperlink and your readers will silently thank you for it.”
This is an article well worth reading, let us know what you think in the comments.
