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...

Writing for the Web session in July

There's another of our semi-regular Writing for the Web sessions coming up next month, on Tuesday 6 July.

These sessions are a quick introduction to the challenges that face us when we're writing content for websites, with lots of practical tips and examples of how to create content that is more likely to be discovered, read, and acted on.

The session is an hour long, from 9.30am to 10.30am in HG21 Heslington Hall.

If you'd like to attend, please let me know (pak500@york.ac.uk). Please let anyone else from your department know if you think they'd find it useful too.

Image by surrealmuse

Writing tip - stress the benefits, not the features

When writing content that needs to be persuasive (whether that's to encourage a purchase, sign up for a course, attend a lecture, etc) it's important to appeal to the emotions of your reader. You need to be answering the question "What's in it for me?", by telling your readers how they will benefit, rather than just listing features.

Think of a glass of water - you could describe it in terms of features (wet, cold, transparent) or benefits (thirst-quenching, refeshing, healthy). What sounds more appealing?

The Apple website is an excellent example of benefits over features. Although they produce electronic gadgets which by their very nature are packed with features, the main focus of the site is about the benefits for the purchaser. The iPhone and iPod pages are all about benefits: you can take your whole music library with you, keep up to date with your friends by being able to use Facebook anywhere, find a nearby restaurant when you've got a pizza craving, etc.

The specific details of the features are all there too (you need to be able to back up any benefits you claim) but that's not the first thing you see. If I really want to know, I can look at the technical specifications page to find out that it has a 480 by 320 pixel screen with 163 pixel per inch resolution, but most people won't know or care what that means - they want to know the benefit: that their photos will look fantastic.

Even something as dull as a wireless keyboard can sound more exciting when you focus on the benefits (your desk will be clutter-free) rather than the features (it uses Bluetooth to connect to your computer wirelessly).

If you only focus on features, you risk two things:

• Your audience might not make the leap from the feature to how they will benefit from them, especially if the features are technical or use a lot of jargon.
• They might make the leap, but you've now given them an extra uncessary step of making the mental connection between the features and what's in it for them - you've made them think.

So how are you selling your department / course / college? Are you stating the benefits or just the features?

Learn more

Interested in learning about writing effective web content? Come along to one of our Writing for the Web sessions on 30 April or 24 May 2010 for more practical tips.