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Writing hyperlink text

May 5, 2008

It’s essential that we find and understand links quickly since most web pages we visit don’t contain the information we’re looking for, they merely help us find the page we want.

A typical process we go through to find information on the web is…

1. Go to a website (usually found by using a search engine like Google).
2. Scan the page looking for a link that seems like it might take us to where we want to go.
3. Click on the first reasonable choice we find.
4. Scan the new page to see if it has what we are looking for.
   If the page does contain what we are looking for, we might do the following:
   1. Scan the new page looking for a link that seems like it might take us to where we want to go. Then we repeat the whole process above.
   2. Click on the back button, or some site navigation bar choice to try a different path on this site.
   3. Give up, go back to Google, and select the next site option.

We will often continue this process for minutes to hours depending upon how determined we are to find the information we are looking for.

Our behaviour of searching for a path that seems most likely to provide the information we need has been equated to an animal searching for food. This concept, call information foraging, labels us as informavores and stresses the value of information scent as we hunt for the information we seek.

Informavores will keep clicking as long as they sense that they’re getting warmer. This means that the scent must keep getting stronger and stronger, or people give up. Progress must seem rapid enough to be worth the predicted effort required to reach the destination.

One lesson from this information scent is to ensure that links and category descriptions explicitly describe what users will find at the destination. Faced with several navigation options, it’s best if users can clearly identify the trail to the prey and see that other trails are devoid of anything edible.

Here are some tips for achieving a strong information scent with our links.

• Don’t use made-up words or your own slogans as navigation options: They don’t have the scent of the sought-after item. Plain language also works best for search engine visibility, searching provides a literal match between the words in the user’s mind and the words on your site.
• Each page should clearly indicate that they’re still on the path: Provide feedback about the current location and how it relates to users’ tasks.
• Ensure link text is descriptive of its destination: We scan a page looking for the information that we’re after. The links usually stand out, but the word on the link must smell like what we’re after, or we just move on. Consider the following comparisons.

• Limit link text to a maximum of four words: When we scan, we only spend a moment looking at the text of a link. The more words we have to process the slower we go, or we just skip it. Up to four words seems to be a reasonable number for most readers to scan quickly. Compare the following examples:
  • Find out more about next week’s conference.
  • Find out more about next week’s conference.

• Place important words at the front of link text: When scanning, the first words we see are the words at the front of the link text. We may not even see any of the words after the opening two words. So, to improve the above example even more, we can change:
  • Find out more about next week’s conference.
  • Find out more about the conference next week.

• A link should make people want to click, start with an action verb: Once your link is descriptive and scannable, add a little energy and action to it.
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