Click Here: Good or Bad Practice?
I've been involved in an on-going discussion over whether it is acceptable to use "Click Here" as the copy on a CTA button. Initially, I defaulted to the view that this is just bad practice. My criteria for this would be that:
- It was used in the early days of the internet when people really didn't know what a link was. A reality that no-longer persists.
- It's just plain ugly and just isn't descriptive.
- It's rubbish for screen-readers and accessibility.
- Search engines don't recognise the value in the same way they would with a more descriptive term.
Plenty of people subscribe to this basic POV.
However, I have thawed some what. Sure, if you site was littered with click here links that could suggest that you were in-experienced and the usability of your site reflected that .
But, but, but as a call to action click here does have its uses. Especially from a commercial perspective when you really want (nay, need) users to click on to the next page. I also think it can be done in a way that hopefully is encouraging people to expedite an action (and not necessarily confuse them.)
What is this based on? You will have to trust me. Suffice to say that multvariate testing flushes out these dilemmas and actually strengthens the argument that, if used sparingly, click here can sometimes really help with the simple dilemma of getting users from one page to the other.
I still hate it though.
Carl Knibbs
Reader Comments (2)
And our original button without the 'click here' is almost winning the multivariate test - hooray! :-)
Are you still going to go to Australia? Are you sure? :-)
Seriously, thanks Nicki. In that case, I may have to re-think my post....
Carl