Hyperlinks - Friend of Foe?
The success of users navigating with links depends on two things:
- How well the user can predict where the link will lead
- How well the user can differentiate one link from the other, nearby links.
-Jared Spool in Website Usability: A Designer's Guide
One of the prime goals of user interaction design on the web is to eliminate questions the user may have when arriving at a site. Vague, one word links causes a pause to think in the user's flow when reading the site. Steve Krug says one should not have to "think" when viewing a site. Navigation should be intuitive enough to eliminate questions. One way we can do this is to design our hyperlinks to aid a user's prediction of what comes next.
Let's suppose we had a site that sold cars. The user's main goal on the site will be finding and getting good information about cars in which she may be interested. Let's say the main navigation links were: "Shop", "New Releases", "Clearance", and "Finance". Upon arriving at any of these, the user will have questions about whether or not they will help her meet the goal at hand: "Shop" might make her stop to wonder if she couldn't just browse around to get information without buying. "Financing" would cause the user to wonder if pricing information was there also.
By designing these links to be more descriptive, the user will not have to guess: "Browse Used Cars", "Browse Used Trucks and SUV's", "Browse New Cars", "Browse New Trucks and SUV's", "Find a lender", "Find automobiles in your price range", "View price list of all models". These tell the user exactly what she can expect to find in the next page.
Link layout is another thing to which users respond. Putting text around links does not seem to work well. Users are often confused as to which portion of the text is a link for instance. In addition, users skim web pages - they do not read in depth. Many links embedded in text will be glossed over in the user's reading. Wrapping links that go onto another line are also distasteful. Also links that are side by side in a vertical list of links are ambiguous and confusing (attention Scott W - see how the links for Admin and Logout are beside each other in the admin section of the blogs. I thought for the longest time that it meant "admin logout" meaning I could log out from being in administrative mode).
Destination of links has been another thing that often confuses users. Links to other sites should open in a new, smaller window. Otherwise a user may become confused and his navigation will become muddled with his perceived inability to get back to where he started. Links to content within the same page should also come with a "back to top" link and a header to the content to which the link refers. The user needs to clearly be able to understand she is on the same page.
Most developers do not put much thought into hyperlinks. Most of what I've covered today is common sense, but it does pay to look back at your sites and see how you've structured your links. I've done this and been confused myself at times. Here is my best tactic: Although I design from a persona and goal oriented perspective, with hyperlinks I generally try to create links that my mother would understand. This keeps me safe 90% of the time :-)