Monday, October 22, 2012

Click here to find out why you should never use click here

One question I'm frequently asked by publishers and people who generally want to revise their "bit" of the website I mainly work on at the moment is why can't we use phrases like "Click here" or "Our address is shown below".

It's sometimes hard to explain but this article from Smashing Magazine sums it up nicely; which I've further summarised below as:

  • Click here emphasises mouse interaction (press here is more apt for a touchscreen, press enter here perhaps for a screen-reader?)
  • Click means nothing if you're using a screenreader which reads links in isolation.
  • Links should tell you about their destination / behaviour - "Click here to download pictures of naked ladies" vs "Download pictures of naked ladies".
  • Not using click here can help you simplify your links - "Click here to see Hugh's photos" vs "Hugh's photos"
"The challenge is to make your links communicate “click here” without actually saying “click here,” and there are many ways to do this. It will take some thought and effort on your part, but in the end, users will benefit with a better experience"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

'Click here' is also really bad for SEO in comparison to using HTML tags more effectively to tell Google what the page you are referring to relates to. A HTML tag relating to the page content is much more valuable in terms of building inbound links such as Leading video production company