Good Links: 7 guidelines how to improve usability

How you write and design your links is crucial to your visitors clicking them or not

. Write them badly and they leave, write them well and they stay. Who knows, they might even do exactly that what you created your site for. Following are 7 guidelines how links should be written to improve the usability of your site.

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Do it consistently

Visitors learn for example how a website marks the links or where the "related-content box" can be found. Consistently adhering to these established "codes" will make it easy to navigate and read the site.

Breaking these conventions will interrupt the flow. Such distractions might be enough for the user to leave. When creating a site it is important to define all the conventions and rules that are used. Consistently following them is essential for giving the user an easy time when visiting.

Don't mislead the visitor

Although links can look however the screen-designer decides, certain standards have developed and find widespread use. Underlining a text for example is a common indicator.

It is good practice not to underline text, marking it blue or putting an arrow in front, if is not a link. Visitors might construe them to be clickable.

The same applies to images. Many users will try to click on a graphic or any other image. Very rarely, they will find an active link - a tiny, but nevertheless negative experience. Captions have proven to be effective to add that little bit of content that users need in order not to click on an image. And if a link is present, it can be placed in the caption itself.

Show used links

Marking which links have been visited is very valuable. It helps to quickly "tick off" when going through a site or helps in finding this piece of information from a previous visit. Unfortunately, a great many sites do not use this very basic feature.

If the "visited" feature should also extend to the navigation is debatable. On very deep sites it might be useful. On the other hand it might confuse the visitor. The navigation should be a constant and change only minimally.

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Match the destination with the link

Clicking on a link can be compared to following road signs in a city never visited before - you are very happy if you get confirmation that the choice you just made was the one intended.

Same thing applies to links - if a link reads "find out more about our services" the page that it relates to should show the words "Our Services" somewhere prominently in the title. It confirms the action taken.

Well written titles indicate clearly what the main topic is on the page. This is very useful, especially considering that a lot of traffic directly dives deep into the page.

Good Links: 7 guidelines how to improve usability

By: Martin Richardson

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