Links are a serious business

Rich collaboration

My work and experience in the online space is exciting and fulfilling because of my close collaboration with two very talented and creative professionals, Renée Todres and Heather Schoenheimer.

Renée is the Managing Director of Tipping Point, a digital services company with extensive experience in e-marketing, website design and innovative web-based business solutions.

Heather is the CEO of HS Consulting, and a specialist consultant in HR, Learning Development, Organisation Capability and Leadership Curricula.

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Special note

Underline is used within this article to demonstrate link examples.
The underlined examples are not active links.

About links

Links create the fabric of the user's experience on the website.

Much attention is given during the design phase to menu, header and footer links but persistent navigation links quickly lose focus as the user moves into the website.

And once persistent links lose focus, in-page links become the navigation enablers.

In-page links are a potential source of website or email risk. Why? Because links that fail to trigger responses from website or email users, put business objectives at risk.

What is the difference between a link that triggers a response and a link that is ignored? Two 'triggering' attributes: visibility and persuasiveness. Both have a significant influence on whether the user responds.

Why does link visibility matter?

When a user navigates to a content page, their focus goes to the content area.

Before they read a single word, they SENSE the page heading, sub-headings, links and text. As their conscious mind comes into gear, users test the page content against their user agenda.

• Does this page look relevant to what I'm about? (The user checks Page title, opening phrases and sub-headings in the first page view.)
• Are any of the next options relevant? (If the initial appraisal fails to interest, the user checks the links in the first page view.)

Users only recognise links in those first few seconds of potential engagement if THEY LOOK LIKE LINKS!

What is reducing link visibility?

When websites omit underlining from links, site links lose their visual impact. True, the coloured word may change to an underlined style as the mouse moves over the link but initial page activity rarely involves mouse movement except for page scrolling.

Link decisions

When planning your website or email look & feel, decide how important the impact of links are to eliciting your users' response.

With link style almost universally controlled by style sheets, you can always revise an initial decision if customer feedback suggests non-underlined links are being missed.

Why does link persuasiveness matter?

Does anyone need to ask why they want links to persuade their users to click?

• Links are doors to the next user engagement point. They can influence the movement of users around content and transaction areas.
• Links provide a subtle opportunity to cross-sell or promote information and services.
• In emails, links are the key to drawing the subscriber into the site.

What persuades?

What 'tips' the reader to click a link?

1. A match between the reader's agenda and what they expect to find at the link's destination.
2. A value proposition that is in tune with the user's value set.

Sometimes, a single link, without surrounding text, will 'tip' a click if the destination content it suggests matches the user's NEXT priority.

In most cases, both 'tipping' conditions are needed: the match to agenda expectation and a reason (value proposition) for clicking.

Persuasive power through link text

If users are deciding whether to click, their eyes are drawn to the link text.

So how do you write link text to build in 'persuasive power?

1. Describe what the reader will find at the end of the link. For example, "All campaigns are fully tested prior to launch using our rigorous testing methodology".
2. If possible, tune the link text to a priority of the user's agenda. For example, "Extend your marketing team by partnering with Tipping Point.
3. Limit link text to the words that set the user's expectation of what they will find. For example, "Assess for yourself the value of email learnings" not "Assess for yourself the value of email learnings".

Should you include an action (verb) in the link?

Sometimes the destination action has descriptive value. For example, In "Subscribe to our newsletter updates sets expectation about a page where the user can subscribe.

However, if the action adds no meaning about destination page content, an action word risks diluting the impact of your link.

Persuasive power through text that surrounds the link

When the realisation of your business objectives are bound up with 'tipping' users to click, you will need to work harder at building link power.

The one to one-and-a-half lines of text around the link must 'argue' the value of clicking the link. For emails, the value proposition is a critical element of the call to action.

Examples

"Extend your marketing team by partnering with Tipping Point."

I use context analysis and user agenda profiling to identify potential value text to support a link, as well as agenda priorities that may be reflected in the link itself.

Footnote on 'click here'

Even the World-wide Web Consortium has resorted to warning about 'click here'! but, despite all the warnings, the 'click' word persists and especially where content owners fear users may not notice a non-underlined link!

Worst of all, 'click here' links create an accessibility issue. They provide no help for visually impaired users who are using text readers to navigate website pages.

Text readers provide a list of page links to reduce the time it takes for users to find the link they want. In the list, links have no context. How can a user decide which of the 3 or 4 'click here' links will take them to the content they are seeking?

Further online reading

Is Navigation Useful? Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, January 9, 2000. Nielsen pointed out that research shows that "when they arrive on a page, users ignore navigation bars and other global design elements: instead they look only at the content area of the page".

Don't use "click here" as link text, W3C Conformance and Quality Assurance. Also provides further reading links.

Footnote

I published un update to the original article in the CIDM e-newsletter, August, 2006.
Links are a serious business [pdf 65Kb]

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