
Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here” - waterhole
http://uxmovement.com/content/why-your-links-should-never-say-click-here/ 
======
walexander
Bad advice, in my experience.

Anecdotally, I did a website recently for a carpet cleaner. Standard wordpress
job with his services and things. At the top of the home page, he wanted a
link to a form for redeeming living social coupons, which, not wanting to say
"Click Here for", I just made as "Reedem Living Social Coupon".

It turned out after a couple weeks that many of his users were not clicking
"Reedem Living Social Coupon", but clicking the "Contact Us" link. As a quick
fix, I renamed the link to "Click Here to Redeem Living Social Coupon" and
bolded the text. He mentioned a week later that this had a noticeable
improvement in people clicking the correct form.

People who use the web for scheduling carpet cleanings are not always the same
as the twitter crowd. You need to remember who your audience is, not what all
your programmer friends prefer.

(And for some closure, I ended up adding a "coupon code" optional entry on the
generic contact form for people who still clicked the wrong one anyway.)

~~~
wpietri
My cofounder has had similar experiences. I don't have the data handy, but
last time I grumbled about a "click here" he told me about a couple of times
he A/B tested it and got substantial wins.

I still wouldn't use "click here" in normal writing (e.g., a blog post); I
think it's unnecessary and a bit gauche. But I'm happy to do it on landing
pages and other places where I really do want people to click there.

------
pasiaj
I've tried to abide by this rule for most of the 17 years I've done web
development. There is, however, an exception to this rule: My mom.

My mom (and my dad) belong to the group that - even after a decade of daily
computer use - frequently fail to recognize distinct interface elements. They
seem to have no general concept of the look / purpose of a link, a window, a
modal box etc. Colors and chrome are meaningless to them, but text that says
'click here' is the best of UX there can be.

I've noticed that many web publications that cater to non-savvy users tend to
stick with the 'click here'-pattern.

~~~
larrys
"My mom (and my dad) belong to the group"

As a matter of fact I spoke to _your parents_ the other day. They asked me if
there was a space between the first and second word of my domain name. They
also didn't understand that you can't just send an email to _domainname_ you
need an address at _domainname_. They didn't know what a browser bar was they
just type my domain name in google and go from there.

In all seriousness you raise an excellent point.

It would be interesting if there was some data and metrics to backup the web
saavyness of various audience types and how a particular link style impacts
those groups. What works with one group might be a detriment in another group.

~~~
ams6110
I think in general, if you are targeting the "general public" or an audience
you know is probably not tech-savvy, you're better off with links that say
"Click Here" or actually using buttons.

------
tokenadult
Even though the advice is from 2004, useit.com's article "Guidelines for
Visualizing Links"

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html>

appears to offer more user-friendly advice (perhaps because it is based on
more thorough usability research) than the advice in the article kindly
submitted here.

The Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design" article

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html>

(updated 2011) says one of the top ten mistakes is "3. Not Changing the Color
of Visited Links." I have to agree.

------
crazygringo
This is a fantastic article, and the first time I've ever come across anything
addressing these issues.

The only thing I don't entirely agree with is:

1) Wrong: "first Falling Bear _gets run over_ " 2) Right: "first _Falling
Bear_ gets run over"

I think they're just different. In the first case, I expect a link to to a
photo of Falling Bear as he's getting run over. In the second case, I expect a
link to a page on Falling Bear, that may have nothing to do with when he was
run over.

But I think the distinction is important to make.

~~~
revelation
I think Wikipedia has done a first class job of destroying peoples trust into
"nouns as links". They mention a blog entry in a Wikipedia article, but of
course clicking blog just takes you to the Wikipedia article on blogs, instead
of the actual blog in question (which you then have to find through the
references).

Guaranteed confusion every time.

~~~
danso
I bet the more common and more frustrating experience has been the ad services
that auto-inject hover-ads into common nouns, such as "loans" or "books"

------
ArcticCelt
The problem is that the article seems to give advices based on the personal
opinion of the author and has no data to test his theories. By testing
different versions on my web sites I often got better results from "ugly
formulations" like "click here to order" than something "pure" that has no
call to action. What I found was the most important is that the context must
be clear and descriptive of what the user will find the other side of the link
but also contain some call to action.

~~~
einhverfr
I think this may be an important point, but it makes me wonder if "click here
to order" would be less effective than "order today." Certainly the latter
contains a call to action and perhaps a better one. Again it's a question but
one which I have not studied in terms of user behavior.

~~~
Evbn
The former is a simpler more immediate action that is easier to induce.

~~~
einhverfr
The second is more imperative.

As I say, I don't have data on this, but it would be interesting to study.

~~~
hrktb
IMHO introducing a time dimension might be contrary to the goal. 'today' means
later in the day perhaps (==never, acutally). You could use 'now', but it
would still induce a reflection on doing it now or not. Just 'order here'
feels like less to parse and less ways it could go wrong.

------
JangoSteve
I agree with almost everything in this post, philosophically and
intellectually. However, any usability study I remember seeing on this subject
has always concluded that "click here" converts better. So until they back up
any of their suggestions with data, this article gets relegated to pure brain
fodder.

Edit: And I'm sure conversions would probably also depend on the demographics
of your user base, so I'd be interested in seeing that included as well.

~~~
djbender
How do we change these behaviors if we don't lead users to it as an industry?
Do you want to make the web a better place or just raise your conversion rate?
I don't know if there is a "right" answer.

~~~
gms7777
I think its pretty arbitrary to claim that "changing these behaviors" would
"make the web a better place".

I think if people think and react in a certain way, there is nothing wrong
with that, and web design should evolve around how people act as opposed to
the other way around.

Then again I don't work in either any sort of UX or web development, so maybe
I should keep my mouth shut here :)

~~~
djbender
Yes it is arbitrary, but it's a claim many people have made in this discussion
previously. I'm just reiterating it here.

I don't however see how changing these behaviors would make the web a worse
place.

~~~
gms7777
To what extent do you think its possible to change behaviors like this? That
is to say, to what extent do you believe people's reaction to this sort of
stuff are innate human behaviors and reactions, and how much is learned
through interactions to UIs and can be relearned?

And I agree, I don't see how changing the behaviors would make the world a
worse place, but I think if you want to make a case for having the entire
industry lead users to certain behavior patterns, an argument should be made
for why this is actually improving the web, beyond one person's aesthetic
preferences.

------
ramit
I've run a bunch of tests on this with 100,000+ email users. In nearly every
test, we found that varying the copy of the text link from "Click Here" to
"Join Now" or "Get the Video" or "Buy Now" or a bunch of other copy...made
almost no difference.

------
citricsquid
I think this example ([http://uxmovement.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/clickhere_n...](http://uxmovement.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/clickhere_nouns.png)) is absolutely awful. Many
websites style text in many ways, if you're going to refuse to have "click
here" (or any other call to action) then you absolutely must stick to common
patterns: links being blue and underlined.

~~~
larrys
Not to mention that many things (even if styled correctly) that look like
links are actually those "vibrant" pop up ads.

------
sp8
I'm surprised that no one appears to have mentioned the main reason I was
always taught not to use "click here".

From W3C: <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-facilitate-navigation>

"Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context
-- either on its own or as part of a sequence of links."

This is especially true when you consider users who use screen readers.

------
phmagic
Good post, but it would be more convincing with data. At this point, it seems
like the blog post is based on your intuition. None of us have great intuition
as to what 90% of web users are doing.

~~~
iamdave
I agree, there are a lot of things here that come off as just opinion or
speculation but doesn't give any reasons for _why_ that hold up to firm
scrutiny. An example:

* Doing so diminishes their experience of your interface because it momentarily takes their focus away from it. Instead of focusing on the interface and its content, “click here” diverts their attention to the user and their mouse. Not to mention, you can also make them feel dumb by suggesting that they don’t know what a link is or how to use a mouse.*

Based on what? At this point in time, very few people think about the actual
action of moving a mouse and clicking a link, they just do it. It is now an
innate action

however

you have to keep your audience in mind here. That second paragraph about
making your audience seem dumb? Well what about the group of people who almost
never use a computer, the elderly or those who are just not around machines as
often? They might read a linked word and think it's something completely
different. Telling them to click here engages in the mind "There is more
relevant information on the next page".

------
lotharbot
It's more than just links. Anything you want the user to interact with should
be self-explanatory.

Buttons shouldn't say yes/no or ok/cancel. They should describe the actual
action. "Leave this page" or "stay on this page", "Remove from cart" or "keep
in cart", and so on.

~~~
crazygringo
I'm not convinced -- I find the Vista dialogs really confusing for that
reason.

First, I read the question, "Do you want to save this file?"

Then I naturally expect "Yes", "No", "Cancel" -- effortless to understand.

If I see "Save this file", "Don't save this file", "Return to application", it
takes a lot longer, because I have to parse each button, which is redundant
and annoying since I' already parsed the question.

The only time I've found longer button names to be useful are in rare non-
intuitive situations, like when copying files into a directory with files of
the same name, and there are multiple options you can take.

~~~
lotharbot
There shouldn't _be_ a question if it's only going to repeat what your dialog
options say -- you don't ask "do you want to save?", you just put up "save
file", "exit without saving", or "return to program" without any question at
all.

Also, yes/no/cancel are only "effortless" to understand if you read the
question first (not everyone does that) and if the question is simple.

An example of doing it wrong: my classroom had an unstable piece of software
that would occasionally pop up a long error message that asked "do you wish to
continue?" at the end; students wouldn't read the whole thing, but would just
click "no", which closed the software.

If the same popup had the error message and then buttons marked "continue" or
"close program", it would have been far more straightforward.

~~~
dmckeon
Similar issue: dialog boxes which ask a question using words like cancel,
continue, yes, no, or okay, when the question is followed by buttons using
similar or identical words, but whose meanings are the opposite of the
question.

Example from a commercial site:

    
    
        Are you sure you want to cancel the changes you made?
    
        [ ] OK   [ ] Cancel
    

To clarify, 'OK' is "cancel the changes" whereas 'cancel' is "cancel the
cancel" :-(

If the dialog question were worded as:

    
    
        Do you want to apply the changes you made?
    
        [ ] OK   [ ] Cancel
    

with the appropriate logic reversal, it would have been clear.

I view sites with issues like this as I would a corporate office with damaged
or out-dated signage - a hint that the products or services offered inside are
unlikely to be any better in quality.

------
aresant
Without data it's hard to agree with these "conclusions"

At very least if you are planning to change around your links based on this
article give a look to Dustin Curtis' data-driven experiment on changing link
names:

www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html

~~~
Evbn
Every idiot already copied Dustins conclusion and ignored his research. This
article deserves an award for the most intelligent thoughtful accurate article
that broke the web because its readers are idiots.

~~~
mnicole
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, every time I see the obligatory "You
should follow me on Twitter" at the end of every blog post or Dribbble
submission, the last thing I want to do is follow that person on Twitter.
Commanding someone to do something they might not have done otherwise is
neither friendly nor approachable and I'm much more likely to click on the
Follow button in the sidebar once I'm done reading a few of their entries and
getting a more thorough idea of who this person is than the one at the bottom
of a single post.

------
will_work4tears
I've been a firm "eye-roller" at this idea for a long time. My boss often uses
terms like "call to action" and has me change text because he feels it might
"confuse" people. I do it, don't get me wrong, but I give an extra strong roll
with my eyes as I'm doing it.

I get that there really are dumb people out there, but if "submit" confuses
you when you are "submitting an application" (of which the button is "submit
your application" rather than "submit") you might not get the job. Likely so
even if you are applying to McDonalds.

This article though... Almost turns me to his side, at least on this topic.
Nice read.

~~~
10dpd
Your statement 'there are some really dumb people out there' could also be
phrased as 'there are some really smart people out there who have better
things to do than surf the Web all day' and just want to get to the
information they are looking for without having to decipher an interface.

~~~
will_work4tears
When you have to "decipher" the difference between "submit" and "submit your
application", smart is not a valid descriptor.

edit: I guess I should state that I'm describing the submit button on an
actual form, with the title "application" or some such and that the user is
entering in data (a lot in this case) and that "submit" is pretty much
industry standard for forms

------
zerostar07
Click here to read why you should probably ignore this advice:
<http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30124>

I believe people process text faster than they process visual cues like fancy
icons or underlined anchor links. "Click here to view demo" seems to be faster
to process, and more explicit than a fancy "View demo" hyperlink (CSS re-
styling of links does not help in that respect). This is pure speculation of
course, but one might try to do the reaction-time experiment.

------
philip1209
D Curtis' A/B testing data does not support this:

[http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter....](http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html)

~~~
michaelpinto
Amen! From a marketing point of view you're 100% correct. In marketing this is
known as a "call to action". This is why all of the terrible meme graphics on
facebook say "share this" -- while the usability "expert" may hate this it
works. And honestly I may dislike it, but it's not about me -- it's about the
user.

------
user49598
While semantically this makes sense, and aesthetically it's preferable to
some, I would guess that it really doesn't align with actual human behavior.

Theory: When you want someone to do something, they will do it more often if
you tell them to than if you just hint at it. When people read text, they
assume someone else has written it and subconsciously invent a small narrative
in their head. If this narrative tells them to do something, they are more
likely to do it than if the narrative just lets them know something exists.
And that's essentially what we're getting at. What this article is supposing
is that, people will more likely do something if you let them know it exists
than if you tell them to do it. I sadly disagree. Am I going to put 'click
here' on my own sites? No, it seems kind of trashy and turn of the century.
But there is a legitimate use for it.

------
SCdF
So this advice is as old as the Internet hills.

Does anyone actually have strong evidence supporting it (i.e. quantifiable UX
studies)?

I've always found the reasons given for this kind of thing rather vague and
arguable:

\- Don't use click: I really doubt users care

\- Don't use 'here': fine, being specific is good where you can

\- Link to nouns: seems arguable. Surely if you're linking to a bear then use
the noun. If you're linking to a bear getting run over, 'getting run over' is
the action here, and should be the link, _especially_ if you have more than
one action to link to.

\- Link to specifics: yeah, you already said that one.

\- End on a link. Hmm.. I'd need to see numbers to believe it

------
dchest
Did the author A/B tested this?

~~~
notatoad
Nope. Nothing on uxmovement is ever backed up by any data, just vague
assertions. The worst part is that they always frame their articles as "why X
is true", but then the article is essentially "x is true because x is true".

~~~
mnicole
Wish this was its own comment and was upvoted to the top. I stopped going to
UXMovement after the author continually attacked visitors in the comments
section that questioned his posts to the point of calling them assholes and
idiots. He seems to just post his own assertions about what UX is without any
valuable data points.

------
kalleboo
I was going to mention SEO and use the example of googling for "click here",
but I was surprised how the wikipedia article on the phenomenon in the OP
("Mystery meat navigation"[1]) actually managed to make it to #3, amidst
downloads for Acrobat Reader, QuickTime, Java runtime etc. How did Google
manage that? I'm impressed.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation>

~~~
Evbn
Google downplays link text after the "miserable failure" incident, and only
that Wikipedia page has the search keyword on the content page itself.

------
JoshTriplett
See also the classic advice from the w3c:
<http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/noClickHere>

~~~
Evbn
That's very bad advice that misunderstand the distinction between objects and
actions and is completely uninformed by psychologically or marketing insights.
It's fine for a semantic Web for robot archivists, but poor for human users.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Care to clarify what you mean by the "distinction between objects and
actions"?

If you mean actions within a web application that cause something to happen,
then the w3c didn't misunderstand that at all; they simply didn't take it into
account because the web at that time didn't have nearly as much of that as it
did hyperlinked static content.

Apart from that, the w3c wrote that advice for for people intending to
construct a useful hyperlinked web of information, not for people building
deliberately manipulative copy. Consider the target audience.

------
SuperChihuahua
Ive begun writing "Press here" and not "click here" since you cant really
click with the ipad/iphone - lets see how that turns out

~~~
shaggyfrog
I can think back to the age of onion belts and when "press" _was_ the dominant
verb form to refer to activating a button; I'm not sure when that changed.

------
dinkumthinkum
I think it is a practice that probably should fall out of favor but this
article is really a great example of what I call "UI designer babble." UI or
UX is like the new vogue, designers are the hottest commodities, or so they
tell you. They want to give you all this "scientistic" basis for all of their
claims but it just falls flat. So here we have: "“Click” Puts Too Much Focus
on Mouse Mechanics." Really? When you see a link that says "Click Here" are
you really focusing on "mouse mechanics."

If you want to say "click here" is unnecessary and you'd do better by
providing a more specific call to action, fine. But don't try to tell me you
are using some kind of sophisticated psychology to divine the text of links.
Maybe if you had provided a study that used CAT scans or something that show
that but honestly that probably just be silly and pedantic.

------
j_s
I love uxmovement.com, always fighting the good fight for academic purity (eg.
"things should work this way") instead of practical reality (eg. "this is how
it really works").

Hopefully they're only 5-10 years ahead of everyone else; imagine the SEO
juice they'll have then!

------
lnanek2
It's stupid and ugly, but I've seen studies before where click here simply got
more clicks. It's simply more effective to tell people straight out to click
something, than to hope they pay enough attention to an underlined noun and
have enough interest in it to investigate it without any prompting, etc..

This blogger has mentioned before that he sees no reason to A/B test because
he thinks an experienced designer knows better anyway. So I can totally see
him recommending something that performs worse in an A/B test like this.

------
ThomPete
This is wrong advice If you are trying to get more people to click. My
experience from having Done more banner than I care to remember is that it
increases click rate .

------
kmfrk
I think the "here" habit also has to do with cases in which the CSS has failed
to demarcate the link from the rest of the text.

The article gives some good advice, but I think it's always worth considering
that links should be emphasized in the context of both HTML and CSS (and
static images and any JS magic).

Although I think the word "click" should not be a part of any link in 2012,
you shouldn't follow this guide unquestioningly in other regards.

------
antihero
Fantastic article. That sure, I'm not sure linking purely to nouns is any
better than linking purely to verbs. If you're going to make the argument
about lack of information, the lone nouns are almost worse, as they don't say
_what_ is happening, especially for something like a video. I'd say link both
the noun and the verb.

------
nyar
Old people don't understand you can click on things, if it's a brick and
mortar business that caters to all age groups there must be every indication
that a clickable element is clickable. Easiest way is to tell it like it is,
or draw some sort of mouse pointer on it.

------
mehulkar
I think this is great advice, but I've been spending a lot of time with my
grandparents and although they're only using computers more every day, they
definitely do NOT know know what a clickable link is and what to do with it.

------
Goladus
The author has a point, but 'click here' is reliable for a lowest common
denominator call to action. Using it is usually better than trying and failing
to come up with a more effective contextually appropriate phrase.

------
bradpineau
I die a little inside when I see a "click here" link.

------
ivankirigin
Your links should be tested and you should probably use whatever achieves your
goals the best (whether excellent UX, or clickability)

------
tea-flow
Actually, after the recent Google Penguin update you might want to think about
using more 'Click Heres' than you did before...

~~~
Evbn
Link with details?

------
jvandenbroeck
This advice is so old, what's next, an article on top of HN on why you should
never use tables? ...

------
TheFuture
Also, "click" only makes sense with a mouse. Touchscreens are here to stay.

------
eragnew
This is exactly what I needed to read today. Thanks :)

------
ne0codex
Oooh Netiquette!

------
far33d
Data please.

------
Evbn
Slashdot had an excerpt section "links in this post". It was ridiculous to see
the list of links: "writes", "here", "now", "this article"

------
clobber
Why You Should Never Say "UX" For User Experience

