Your users rely on link text to navigate through your site. These small and unassuming bits of UX copy contribute substantially to the findability, discoverability, and accessibility of your content.
The links that best fulfill those roles are:
Specific
Sincere
Substantial
Succinct
Specific
A link’s primary purpose is to communicate to users what they’ll find on the other side of a click. Vague or repetitive language fails that purpose.
One of the most common link failures is the generic and unhelpful Learn more.
Not Specific: Mailchimp used vague Learn more links throughout its site.
I’m generally impressed with Mailchimp’s copy. (I even use it as an example of good writing in the...
For example, one link from Emory University’s homepage reads, Restoring vision and hope. What does that mean? Hope for what? Vision for the future? The meaning only becomes clear when the text below the link is read. That descriptive text is necessary for the reader to understand that the link
All UX mappings have two-fold benefits. First, the process of creating a map forces conversation and an aligned mental model. Second, the shared artifact resulting from the mapping can be used amongst your team, organization, or partners to communicate an understanding of your user or service. This
These designers were presumably highly motivated to follow the standard since a part of their course grade was determined by their designs and they knew from previous lectures that compliance was to be considered a major usability consideration. Also, the standard was very small and easy to follow
Is Bitcoin Accelerating Our Global Warming?
So far, only speculations have arisen. It is dangerous to assume that bitcoin mining will be significantly more efficient in the future. It is a 50:50 scenario because no one really can tell how much more powerful computers of the next decade will be, and if they will be able to handle the
Freewheeling Freelancers will Dominate the Future Jobs Market
The freedom of completing tasks on flexible terms is a critical appeal for the gig economy and has begun to draw nine to five workers bewildered at the pace of modern office-based life — and the expenses of the cities where they’re situated. Medium off-shoot The Startup has found that
Can the blockchain and IoT solve international freight’s issues?
Since then — I ended up winning the Shanghai Blockchain Hackathon with this concept — we have been working more deliberately on how to combine IoT and blockchain and create a new platform for international trade. We also won the Technology Challenge of the Emirates National Bank of
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Unless you have an unlimited clothes budget, it’s unrealistic (and wasteful) to wear a new outfit for every single occasion, yet social media pressures us into it. Rent a Runway solves this tension elegantly by recycling (expensive) clothes across a large set of women. It’s an example of the
need better link labels: 4ss for encouraging clicks study
How to use Screening Questions to Select the Right Participants for User Research
You can incorporate distractors into multiple-choice screening questions by providing answer choices that include both your target response and several equally plausible responses. The distractor answers should be realistic both as activities that people would do and as research topics for an
Brand Vocabulary in the Context of UX: Key Terms Defined
With the first, more meaningful definition of Brand in mind, we’ve compiled and defined the concepts that comprise an organization’s brand framework—those concepts that must be defined and understood on a company-wide level in order for an organization to provide a consistent brand experience
4 Noteworthy Intranet Design Trends in 2019
Your organization’s industry is unlikely to play a huge role in whether your organization has a great intranet. (Of course, a trend like “core-task support” will play out differently in different industries, since each has different core tasks. But the idea of core tasks remains identical
The User Experience of Customer-Service Chat: 20 Guidelines
Messages such as “You’re number 5 in the queue” are less helpful than an actual time estimate — for example, one of our study participants noted, after waiting for a few minutes while being number 2 in the wait queue: “They must be really understaffed….” Another user was puzzled by
The State of Ecommerce Search
One example of an improved search algorithm was on The Container Store’s website. In an earlier study, participants were disappointed by the lack of precision in its search results. One user wanted to purchase a set of stainless-steel canisters with clear tops. When she searched for “steel and
A First Look at WordCamp US .
In less than two weeks, members from the WordPress community around the world will head to Nashville, Tennessee for WordCamp US. This is the second consecutive year that the event has been held in Music City and WordPress community has evolved significantly since 2017. The most anticipated topic of
users better link labels: 4ss for encouraging clicks force
Introducing Gutenberg Optimized Themes
In addition to all of the above, the Genesis Framework will be further upgraded for Gutenberg with the release of version 2.8 in Q1 2019. 2.8 will include built-in features that allow you to easily and efficiently style and control Gutenberg blocks as well as auto-load demo content, which can arm
WordPress for Good: Relieving Fatigue .
In this segment, we highlight Untire, an application that helps cancer patients and survivors reduce cancer-related fatigue (CRF) symptoms and regain life. CRF is a common side-effect of cancer and related treatments; patients describe it as a paralyzing level of fatigue that leaves patients
Journey Mapping in Real Life: A Survey of UX Practitioners
Perhaps the most important shared insights from the professionals surveyed were the responses to the question, “When does journey mapping fail?” Respondents shared their stories of when journey mapping was a fruitless endeavor because it was not shared, no buy-in occurred, the map wasn’t
Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid | Nielsen Norman Group
It’s important to measure global navigation clicks on destination pages for those users who enter the site on these pages (that is, they deep-link into your site). Users who deep-link into your site do not have the benefit of context presented via your homepage, so these users need assistance to
Cards: UI-Component Definition
When multiple cards are used together in a layout, they often do not all have the same type of information — some cards might include a text summary, hashtags, or an image whereas other cards on the same page may include totally different details. Cards allow for varying height to accommodate
The Way Forward: Responsibly Deployed Facial Recognition
Precisely because this technology is inevitable, it is imperative we responsibly deliver on the opportunity for facial recognition to benefit both people and businesses, whether that be for security, efficiency or convenience. Unfortunately, today’s cameras are one-way devices. They record data
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
The future of tokenization and blockchain is not just ICOs
For those who continue to see “ICO”, but have no firm understanding of the definition, here’s an over simplified version. An ICO is a way a company can raise funding through using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. This works by the company creating its own coin, perhaps the
JS-Kit Score: Turn Your Site into a Localized Digg
Of course, because this is the only page on ReadWriteWeb that is running a Score widget, it won’t have any data on which content is the highest rated site wide. But the ease of installation is what really catches the eye. JS-Kit is building a suite of tools for web publishers that are modular
sincere better link labels: 4ss for encouraging clicks to
Top 10 Latin American IoT Startups to Watch
Brazil-based SensorBox helps reduce business losses caused by blackouts through cloud-based monitoring that predicts and reports problems with power sources. When SensorBox detects unusual activity, such as a temperature spike in a hospital, it sends an alert and allows users to control equipment
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
Better Link Labels: 4Ss for Encouraging Clicks | The Roots of Minimalism in Web Design
The Roots of Minimalism in Web Design
To better grasp and apply minimalist principles, we need to understand the origins of minimalism and its fundamental characteristics. We explore these topics in a series of two articles: In this first article we define minimalism and look at its history; in a second article we analyze in depth the
Four Bad Designs
The New York Times is probably losing the least money; most users will simply skip the no-scent link. At the same time, of course, the generic link has an opportunity cost: in its place, the newspaper could offer a link to content that's closely related to the current article. People who actually
Aspects of Design Quality
Because voting laws differ between states, the sites are not literally identical. However, they are similar enough that it's fair to compare them. For example, states have different deadlines for requesting absentee ballots, but all states must inform their residents about absentee ballot rules —
