The use of abbreviations, acronyms and technical language often serves to confuse users as it requires specialist knowledge. In a recent study the gadget helpline surveyed more than 5000 people to discover the least understood technical terms. The top ten most confusing include dongle, cookie and WAP. Interesting digital TV also appears in the list given the amount spent promoting the digital switch over. May be the range of television services, such as freesat, on demand TV, sky and sky plus, make it unclear which are included in digital TV. The study also highlights how brand names for technology can further confuse things creating multiple terms for the same technology.
Gadget jargon still confuses many

I recently received a letter I originally dismissed as spam.  The first line read ‘We’re currently checking all our customers’ details to make sure our records are kept up to date.’. The thing that made me question whether this was the usual run of the mill phishing letter attempting to steal my passwords and my life was that I didn’t receive it in my inbox but through my door. Now I’m not saying you can’t get phishing attempts through the post, I once received a hand written letter from the wife of an ex-president of nigeria offering to share millions.  However, generally people running these cons don’t want to have to pay postage.

The other thing that made me think that the letter may be genuine was the lack of dodgy web address designed to coax me in to supplying personal details and secret codes.  It turns out the letter was from Ocardo trying to encourage me to change my setting on there site to receive updates.  In fact, if I was willing to sign up of updates on the service they were willing to give me a £5 shopping vouchure.  However, in order to drive me to the site they had decided to present the letter as encouraging their customers to update there details.  This not only feels like a dishonest way to communicate with your customers it lends credibility to phishing emails.

Compelling copy and careful labelling of links play a vital role in directing users towards performing the right action.  There are also times when, particularly on marketing sites, encouraging users to perform a particular action out weights the understandability of the links.  However, even in these cases there is no reason the call to action could not be both descriptive and actionable e.g. ‘click to buy’ rather than ‘click here’. 

In the article he highlights a study by Marketing Sherpa he felt supported his point of view.  However, this study compared click through rates for three terms (‘click to continue’, ‘continue to article’ and ‘read more’) none of which describe the content the link goes to.  Also just because the user clicked on a link doesn’t mean that they were taken where they expected to be or didn’t immediately select the back button.  This highlights why it is so important to be careful of any user research, questioning whether it applies in your particular case, looking at the method used and whether other interpretations for the findings apply.

The article also addresses the arguement that ‘click here’ wastes anchor text that could contain terms designed to boost search engine ranking.  Quite rightly Brian  rejects search engine optimization over the experience on the page.  However, when search engine optimization will lead to more understandable links that describe what they link to the arguement can’t be easily dismissed.

In answer to the question posed by the article ‘does telling some one to click here actually matter’.  The answer has to be yes.  Actionable links may encourage users to select that link but it doesn’t mean they will go where they want to.  Labelling something ‘click here’ tells the user nothing about the result of their action because ultimately any link could be labelled click here.  However, this does not mean actionable phrases can not be included in descriptive links or that the label affects link performance. 

The user has to look at the content around the link to identify what it does. This is fine if the user has been reading the proceeding paragraph, however very often users will scan the page for links if they are trying to navigate to content that will fulfill their goals. In a well designed site links should standout from body text allowing users to easily identify them. If links are not descriptive the user will need to then identify what content they are likely to link to.

This issue is worse for those that use speach browsers. These browsers have a facility that allows users just to hear the links within the page so they do not have to listen to the full page when they are trying to locate something. However, if links are labelled more it will do little to inform them where the link would go and they may end up listening to several more links in a row unable to distinguish them.

I’ve heard it suggested that the title tag could be used to distinguish more links for speach browsers. This is true, although the user will still need to listen to a meaningless label first. However, how much simpler is it to provide a descriptive link or make the title the link.

Having said this ‘more’ can be used effectively in links when teamed with other words to provided a description of the content, such as ‘more categories’ or ‘more news articles’. It is when it is used on its own as a generic term for this is a link. The only thing worse is the use of the term click here. I apprechiate people may want you to access a certain piece of content, but honestly what else are you suppose to do with links.