While I agree with the authors sentiment and do try not to include 'click here' links in any of the content I'm asked to post. I disagree with his assertion that it's confusing and slows people down.
Having been on the Internet almost daily since the late 90's. I can say with some degree of certainty that the ambitiousness of 'click here' links on the Internet has more or less trained people to look for them.
In the authors example
Jcrew email receipt
For additional order details, please click here to go to your account.
For additional order details, go to your account.
Not only do I immediately understand 'click here' to go to my account, but 'click here' conveys that the link will deep link me directly to the referenced section or pertinent information that the sentence is discussing.
Alternately a 'your account' link, does not convey this message. It tells me I am going to a general account management interface, and will then need to browse around to find the information or section referenced by the sentence.
I believe 'click here' links have their place and convey the very specific message that they should deep link someone directly to the content referenced in the link and not just to a site that contains the referenced content somewhere on the page.
I'm generally with the author on this, but their examples are inconsistent. I think from a language perspective, the linked text should be a verb phrase. We want the user to do something (click here), and verbs are "do words."
So, instead of
For additional order details, go to [your account].
use
For additional order details, [go to your account].
(The author does this inconsistently.)
And in this case:
To review or adjust your AutoPay settings, [click here].
You can review or adjust your [AutoPay settings] at any time.
they change the meaning of the sentence ever so slightly with the extraneous "at any time," showing that it is not always simple to remove the "click here."
Maybe in this case, it should be a button or a simple stand-alone link, like
Around 1994, I'm pretty sure I saw ordinary simple "how to make a Web page" tutorials that told you specifically not do "here" or "click here" links.
You were to instead make the link around relevant text.
(Also, early people often got hypertext just fine. The problem was print designers, who kept wanting to make the Web be glossy brochures. At first, they'd try things like making the whole page a GIF/JPEG, and would get laughed at, but they soon took over what a Web browser is, for the entire field. Over the decades, they'd then slowly rediscover ideas that were there from the beginning, and give them names like "responsive design" and "accessibility", and write books about them. On Monday, I had to battle with a Web site framework, to force something exotic called "server-side rendering", and also to make an `<a href=URL>` element be a hypertext link that the Web browser loads as a Web page when the user chooses to follow the link.)
Amen. Graphic designers with a background in anything print have been a huge hindrance to the web. After a long time in the wilderness of single-page apps and framework, I see at least some small cracks of light where people are recognizing how simple/useful pages (e.g. McMaster-Carr) can be the most "beautiful".
It wasn’t just Nielsen saying this. Pretty much anybody who knew anything about usability or accessibility was telling people not to use “click here” for links since the 90s, and once Google arrived with PageRank, SEO people started saying the same thing. This has been best practice for at least a quarter century for multiple reasons.
This is exactly the sort of article that reminds me of how full of themselves SO MANY people in web design are. It's why I never take anything any "strong" so-called UI/UX expert ideas or notions or whatever particularly seriously, and instead actually listen to the client (not what they say they want, but what goals they actually have)
In this case, the client is my 70ish dad and the people he interacts with for his project. Last thing I'm going to do is be like "no, it's not 1995, people don't need 'click here' this anymore."
People who write articles like this keep people like me in business.
It's a bit jarring (but not in a bad way) to read "It's not 1995." on a page that uses no JavaScript, no images, and where the only styling is "body { width:650px; }".
"Click here" screams "this is a link". It is not as obvious a call to click upon as a big shiny button, aching to be pressed, but it is more obvious than a few words that are in a harder-to-read color and underlined.
"You can go to _your_account_" is a much smoother sentence than "To change your account, click _here_". But is that always what you want? Do you want all your links to be smoothly integrated into the body text? Sometimes you do! Sometimes you don't.
Maybe not so related, but the Spotify desktop client uses a link-styled piece of text after having downloaded an update — "click here to to update" — when you navigate to the updates menu, where I would expect a button instead of a regular link
Readit News
Having been on the Internet almost daily since the late 90's. I can say with some degree of certainty that the ambitiousness of 'click here' links on the Internet has more or less trained people to look for them.
In the authors example
Jcrew email receipt
For additional order details, please click here to go to your account.
For additional order details, go to your account.
Not only do I immediately understand 'click here' to go to my account, but 'click here' conveys that the link will deep link me directly to the referenced section or pertinent information that the sentence is discussing.
Alternately a 'your account' link, does not convey this message. It tells me I am going to a general account management interface, and will then need to browse around to find the information or section referenced by the sentence.
I believe 'click here' links have their place and convey the very specific message that they should deep link someone directly to the content referenced in the link and not just to a site that contains the referenced content somewhere on the page.
So, instead of
For additional order details, go to [your account].
use
For additional order details, [go to your account].
(The author does this inconsistently.)
And in this case:
To review or adjust your AutoPay settings, [click here].
You can review or adjust your [AutoPay settings] at any time.
they change the meaning of the sentence ever so slightly with the extraneous "at any time," showing that it is not always simple to remove the "click here."
Maybe in this case, it should be a button or a simple stand-alone link, like
[Review or adjust your AutoPay settings]
I would disagree. Links are references to resources, not actions (assuming your link isn't a POST request).
Example:
For additional order details, go to [your Account page].
See also wikis.
People who headed that advice benefited from better human usability and improved "SEO" performance due to keyword relevance.
Web tools should have warnings about "click here" text in the same way they do syntax errors.
You were to instead make the link around relevant text.
(Also, early people often got hypertext just fine. The problem was print designers, who kept wanting to make the Web be glossy brochures. At first, they'd try things like making the whole page a GIF/JPEG, and would get laughed at, but they soon took over what a Web browser is, for the entire field. Over the decades, they'd then slowly rediscover ideas that were there from the beginning, and give them names like "responsive design" and "accessibility", and write books about them. On Monday, I had to battle with a Web site framework, to force something exotic called "server-side rendering", and also to make an `<a href=URL>` element be a hypertext link that the Web browser loads as a Web page when the user chooses to follow the link.)
In this case, the client is my 70ish dad and the people he interacts with for his project. Last thing I'm going to do is be like "no, it's not 1995, people don't need 'click here' this anymore."
People who write articles like this keep people like me in business.
- Make the link text match the exact text of the title or heading that you're referencing.
EX: For more information, see [Load balancing and scaling].
- Write a description of the destination page to use as the link text, capitalized as if it's part of the sentence.
EX: You can use Cloud Scheduler and Cloud Functions to manage [task scheduling on Compute Engine].
https://developers.google.com/style/link-text
I've seen lots, lots of people living in 1995 these days then.
"Click here" screams "this is a link". It is not as obvious a call to click upon as a big shiny button, aching to be pressed, but it is more obvious than a few words that are in a harder-to-read color and underlined.
"You can go to _your_account_" is a much smoother sentence than "To change your account, click _here_". But is that always what you want? Do you want all your links to be smoothly integrated into the body text? Sometimes you do! Sometimes you don't.