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...
Your research question should always dictate which research method you use. For example, if you want to know whether users would be able to use a design, then you should watch them interacting with it instead of interviewing them. On the other hand, if you want to understand people’s thoughts
However, it’s not the case that the relationship-level experience is better or more important than the experience of a single interaction. We’ve seen many grandiose plans falter on a few poorly written words of UI copy. While it is important to design the longitudinal experience, it’s equally
Adidas.com: The order summary was too low on the page to be easily viewed. Users had to scroll to the very bottom of the Review & Pay page, right above the mobile footer, to see their final order summary information. The information was also collapsed in an accordion, which made it difficult to
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
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’
Text Scanning Patterns: Eyetracking Evidence
Right-to-left languages such as Arabic favor a reversed F-pattern, like the one seen in this study participant’s gaze plot, as he was scanning a page on an Arabic website. (Each blue dot signifies a fixation. The lines between the dots represent saccades in which the user is moving the eyes and
better link labels: 4ss for encouraging clicks
User Need Statements
As their name suggests, user need statements articulate the end user’s problem we are going to solve, and why it is worth solving. They are a tool to help us stop thinking about users’ needs as nouns and start thinking about them as verbs. When done collaboratively and correctly, they can serve
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
OK-Cancel or Cancel-OK? The Trouble With Buttons
We get countless questions about small details in UI design that don't matter much to the overall user experience. One classic is the order of buttons in dialog boxes: OK / Cancel Cancel / OK Both are reasonable choices, and people can argue for hours about their preferences: Listing OK
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Pre Uber we were all plagued with standing on the corner, possibly in the rain, belongings in hand while attempting to wave down one of the few free taxis. (The worse the rain, the fewer the taxis — that’s a law of nature.) An abundance of unknowns adding further anxiety: how much is it going
Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking
Aggregated empathy maps can also become ways to summarize other qualitative data like surveys and field studies. For example, an empathy map can be used to communicate a persona, instead of the traditional ‘business card’ approach. As more research is gathered about that persona, you can circle
Flat-Design Best Practices
Even if your organization’s characteristics fit that list, we usually advise against a totally flat UI in most situations. There are some cases where a totally flat design won’t do much harm — in designer portfolios or very simple marketing sites, for example. Such sites those can benefit
better link labels: 4ss for encouraging clicks
The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques
To understand how ads compared with each other, we ran multiple comparison tests (using Tukey contrasts). We found that, for most advertisement types, the mobile and the desktop counterparts did not differ significantly, with the exception of related links and the prevideo advertisement (p<
Web.dev Live: Google kündigt dreitägiges Online-Event für Webentwickler an
Bezogen auf deutsche Teilnehmer sehen die Veranstaltungsdaten so aus. Am 30. Juni 2020, dem ersten Konferenztag, befasst sich Web.dev Live von 18 bis 21 Uhr vornehmlich mit Javascript, AMP und den DevTools. Der zweite Konferenztag, der 1. Juli 2020, steht deutlich im Zeichen der PWA und den dazu
WP Engine Culture Recognized at Greater Austin Business Awards
The annual Greater Austin Business Awards competition, presented by The Austin Chamber of Commerce, is designed to honor excellence in all aspects of business. In order to promote awareness and perpetuate good practices, the Awards recognize companies and organization in the Austin region for
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
Customer Updates to WordPress 5.0
The process of disabling the 5.0 editor should not be a hassle. In the coming days, we will be rolling out an admin notice that will display on the Dashboard page* of your site(s). This notice will have information about adopting the new editor and will provide buttons to install/activate the
The Key IoT Security Questions You Need To Ask
For starters, the actual devices must be secure. In the next few years, a new wave of innovation will drive down costs and inundate the market with internet-connected devices in every price range, from electronic toys to manufacturing sensors. In anticipation of this, my Microsoft colleagues have
3 Steps to Stop Unauthorized PHI Access by Terminated Team Members
There’s a fine line between being cautious and becoming authoritarian. When dealing with PHI, it’s essential for organizations to toe that line as much as possible without crossing it. Technology will help control access to your organization according to team members’ roles. Transparency will
3 Surprising Benefits of the Cloud in IoT
In the past, industrial companies have questioned the protection of the cloud because they viewed it as losing the ability to touch and feel their data. Much like consumers who were reluctant to move their savings from under their mattress into a bank account, many businesses have held similar
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
better link labels: 4ss for encouraging clicks
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 4 Critical Challenges of Tech Startup PR
There aren’t very many industries that have a language that’s as involved and specific as the technology industry. For example, tech-sector buzzwords like blockchain, big data, AR, and the like are regular fixtures of today’s industry coverage. The problem is that these buzzwords are often
Better Link Labels: 4Ss for Encouraging Clicks | Why Country Sites Are So Bad
Why Country Sites Are So Bad
This third problem isn't found only with lumbering multinationals. NIH (not invented here) is a universal human feeling, even though it often degrades usability and causes inconsistent design. In our work on non-profit organizations' websites, we often see that local (city or state) groups have
The Anatomy of a List Entry
When users browse a list of options, they want to determine quickly which items are of interest and which they can disregard. Too much information can overwhelm users and create a cluttered appearance. On the other hand, a list entry without enough detail leaves too many questions unanswered
Computer Screens Getting Bigger
The 1024×768 became the leading monitor size in 2004 and has only just been dethroned by a (slightly) larger screen resolution of 1366×768, according to StatCounter. The change over from 1024×768 to bigger screens actually occurred in 2009, but there were so many different larger-resolution
