Back to basics: No surprises please - links should do what users expect

Following on from the first ‘back to basics’ post about why you shouldn't use ‘click here’ as link text, I’m sticking with the link text theme.

This time, the thing to remember is that what happens when a user clicks a link should never be a surprise to them. Users expect links to lead to other web pages. If your link leads to something else and the link text doesn’t say so, that’s going to be a nasty surprise for the user.

We often create links to email addresses. These should include the email address in the link text because this gives a big clue about what the link is to. Instead of writing ‘To find out more, contact us’ and linking to an email address, try ‘To find out more, contact us at name@address.com’. You might reasonably expect the former to link to a contact form, but there will be no surprises what the latter one does.

Links to files such as Word, Excel, PDF or MP3 can also be unpleasant surprises, especially if they are large downloads. A user might not have the correct program to open the file, or they might prefer to not download a hefty PDF and start up Acrobat Reader if they can avoid it. Instead of writing ‘find out more about our module in widgets’, try ‘find out more about our module in widgets (PDF, 700kb)’. No surprises.
PS. If you’re using the University CMS, you get this one for free - the system labels your links for you :)

New windows are another common surprise for users. If you feel you absolutely must open a new window (even though usually I would advise that you don’t), it’s much better to say so: ‘see this other website (opens in a new window)’. Pop-ups can be frustrating and confusing for users, but they’re much less so if they know what’s going to happen before they click the link.

So, whenever you create a link always ask yourself ‘What would a user expect this link to do?’ and make sure you’ve crafted it to avoid surprises.

Back to basics - don't "click here"

A simple tip for the start of a new occasional series of ‘back to basics’ posts: Don’t use ‘click here’ as link text in your web pages. Ever.

This may be old news to seasoned web authors reading, but it’s one of the most common mistakes we see on the University website. Fixing it is one of the easiest ways to improve your web content.

A good summary of why ‘click here’ is bad circulated on Twitter a few weeks ago. I’ll not repeat the reasoning here, but definitely encourage you to read that article. It even quotes Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, who encouraged good linking right from the birth of the web.

‘Read more’, ‘more details’ or just ‘more...’ are bad too, for similar reasons. Use descriptive, scannable links instead and you’ll have made a huge improvement to your web content for very little effort indeed.

More back to basics tips coming soon...