[thelist] Link Etiquette

Dave Nelson dnelson at netbank.com
Thu Jan 30 11:04:00 CST 2003


Why not "click here?"

In a usability test completed recently using web pages where the links
followed the default blue, red, purple, behavior all participants scanned
the content of each page only reading the blue and purple hyperlinks.

It was fascinating. A page would load, they would use the scroll wheel to
scroll the header graphics away, then read only the blue links on the page.
It was only five users, but there attention was so focused on the blue text
links that one user did not EVER read the graphical navigation to the left.

My two big lessons from those five users was that in the 21st century users
do scroll vertically (via scroll wheel) and when there is blue colored
underlined text scattered about a block of black text, it is given a higher
status in the users mind.

The five users come from a mix of different computer expertise, financial
status and age groups. Four used IE 6.x and one used Netscape 6.x with one
being an AOL user.

P.S.
It was really sweet when one of the user's tried to go to a company web
site, that he was on the board of, and could not get it to work because it
had a Flash (with no alternative) splash screen and he kept declining the
Flash install.

--dave



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