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...
Although the layout and attribute placement within each list entry should be largely the same, there are circumstances where important distinguishing information may need to be featured. For instance, if a product is on sale or sold out, it is acceptable to show unique callouts or iconic indicators
When mapping current-state journeys, you must gather qualitative research about how your customers currently perceive their interactions with your organization. This type of mapping relies on research methods that allow you to gather as much first-hand information as possible, (for example
Remember that attention spans online are short. A hiring manager, industry peer, or conference organizer may be more invested in reading than the average person browsing the internet, but you should still try to make a strong impression quickly. Select the projects that you feel are most important
Is Crypto the Missing Ingredient for Universal Basic Income?
Over the past few decades, a growing suite of technologies and advances in artificial intelligence (AI) has given rise to a significant trend toward automation in almost every industry imaginable. Depending on who you ask, though, that trend is either going to lead to a future filled with leisure
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
9 Blockchains Transforming the Way We Pay, Play, and Work
Look past digital currencies’ nosebleed pricing volatility, and you’ll discover a robust, decentralized, secure database. Brands and technologists are quickly figuring out how to put this powerful ledger to good use. Here are several real-world examples that demonstrate cryptos’
Marking Required Fields in Forms
Not necessarily, but red has become the expected required-marker color on the web, which is a reason in its own right to stick with this choice (according to Jakob’s Law). In any case, there is some value to using different colors for the asterisk and for the field label: it allows users to
better link labels: 4ss for encouraging clicks
User Need Statements
User need statements, if properly crafted, have the added benefit of providing a metric for success prior to the onset of ideation, prototyping, and testing. Use the insight, or goal, and ask yourself: how will we know if we accomplish this? Then, as you create your needs statements, establish
Visual Design Terms Cheat Sheet
If there are too few components on a page (which may not even warrant a dedicated page), users may not have enough information scent to confidently navigate that page. Conversely, too many components on a page can cause sensory overload and increase the task time or the chance that people will
Sliders, Knobs, and Matrices: Balancing Exploration and Precision
A variation of sliders features two controls that select a minimum and, respectively, maximum acceptable value. This variation is often used for implementing filters on websites, allowing users to set a minimum and maximum price, beginning and end times for flights, and so forth. As with other
Mobile: Native Apps, Web Apps, and Hybrid Apps
These are all features that are available in HTML5. Also available are the GPS, the tap-to-call feature, and, there is talk about a camera API, although I haven’t seen any web app (or web page) that takes advantage of it so far. There are, however, native features that remain inaccessible (at
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Why are we willing to sleep in strangers’ beds, or conversely, let strangers into our homes? We do so because Airbnb has established a trusted, secure, and easy to use customer experience. Similar to Rent the Runway, Airbnb is a player in the growing “sharing” economy. The peer-to-peer online
WP Engine Recognized For Excellence at The Stevie Awards
We are proud to announce that our Chief Marketing Officer Mary Ellen Dugan was recognized for her leadership in marketing and across the organization. Since starting at WP Engine in 2016, Mary Ellen has spearheaded many successful marketing initiatives. Some noteworthy achievements include
better link labels: 4ss for encouraging clicks
A Look Back at the WP Engine London Summit .
At the end of September, we held our 2018 WP Engine Summit in Austin, Texas. Last week, agencies, brands, and digital innovators from EMEA came together in London for the WP Engine EU Summit. Attendees discussed the future of digital experiences, Gen Z’s perception of the Internet, and the
How to Recover Abandoned Shopping Carts for WooCommerce Stores
Many of those abandoned carts are probably lost for good because you don’t have any contact information from the shopper to try to win them back to checkout. But for a percentage of the carts, your shopper will have gotten far enough along in the process that you’ll have an email address (or
Why Zen Mode Isn’t the Answer to Everything
One of the arguments that zen-mode proponents make is that, over time, frequent users will eventually learn how to access the UI. Yes and no. We know the number of repetitions necessary to learn an interface affects how learnable it is. As proven by the original Windows 8 interface, in the absence
Accordions for Complex Website Content on Desktops
An accordion menu is a vertically stacked list of headers that can be clicked to reveal or hide content associated with them. It is one of many ways you can expose content to users in a progressive manner. Allowing people to have control over the content by expanding it or deferring it for later
Adding an Item to a Shopping Cart: Provide Clear, Persistent Feedback
BodenUSA displayed a banner above the product to indicate that it had been added to the cart. This banner appropriately showed a product image, the options selected, and a clear link to the checkout process. However, it also included upsell promotions (We saw these and thought of you), which can
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
Dear Senior Citizens – You Folks are the Easy Target of Hackers
The victim receives a call from a stranger posing as his or her grandkid, using a frantic-sounding voice, that he or she is in trouble. Arrest, accident, or a robbery. Want to up the drama? The caller sometimes claims to be stuck in a foreign country — and to impersonate more intensity, throw
Data Lake vs. Data Warehouse: Which Is the Best Data Architecture?
But one shouldn’t count data lakes out just yet. Data marketplaces can rescue the promise of data lakes by organizing them for the end user. Just as the internet was much more difficult to navigate before Google, data marketplaces unlock the powerful data lake architecture.In the analytics
Fifteen Podcasts You Must Listen to in 2019
This podcast, with host Tiffani Bova, is like listening in on two friends talking over coffee. With her eclectic guest lineup including leading thinkers, Best Selling Authors, an Olympic Athlete, an NFL Coach, and a Grammy Nominated Artist all sharing what they have learned along the way, and
better link labels: 4ss for encouraging clicks
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
RW Q&A: Monisha Perkash, founder of Lumo Bodytech
Perkash came up with the idea for Lumo seeing her co-founder and CTO, Andrew Chang, suffering from debilitating back pain. Perkash is married to a spine and sports physician, so she could understand how important posture really was. Perkash advised Andrew to attend a posture class and as a result
Better Link Labels: 4Ss for Encouraging Clicks | Instilling Confidence in Online Shoppers: I Bought a Sofa Online and Good UX Sealed the Deal
Instilling Confidence in Online Shoppers: I Bought a Sofa Online and Good UX Sealed the Deal
At the dawn of the ecommerce era, it was often said that people would never buy big-ticket items online. Nor would they buy high-touch items only on the basis of a website description. Wrong and wrong: sites that follow the basic UX guidelines for ecommerce design have long disproven both claims
Tunnel Vision and Selective Attention
Westfield was reasonably compliant with guidelines for presenting a corporation's image on the Web in an "About Us" area, and the user had little trouble finding relevant information. Each event in the company's history was shown in a lightbox-style pop-up. Although this was perhaps an overly
Anchors OK? Re-Assessing In-Page Links
Another common pattern for in-page links displays the links in an area normally used for navigation. For instance, in-page links may appear as sticky navigation at the top of a page. However, we recommend against this placement. The biggest usability concern about in-page links is that they break
