Why Is This Guideline Important
The act of linking your website pages is an act of providing valuable service to your website visitors. Links are a quick and simple way of helping your website visitors discover the pages most related to the one they're reading. Links improve customer experience and, therefore, satisfaction.
Links also keep your prospects on your website longer. The longer you can make them read and click, the higher the chance they will learn more about you and eventually become your customer.
In order to make your visitors click, you must make your links noticeable and highly visible. Your links must stand out from the rest of the content.
Ways to Improve
- Source: http://zzn-transmissions.com/
- Capture Date: July 07, 2015
On ZZN website, you can barely notice the links. They look almost exactly like the content around them:
- links are almost the same color as the content (dark grey)
- links are not underlined
Links change in color when one hovers over them with a mouse, but you cannot count on your visitors to do that. Additionally, the vast majority of mobile phones don't support hover actions.
Good Practices
- Source: http://www.flowcrete.co.uk/our-news/latest-news/flowcrete-focuses-on-social-housing-floors-at-homes-2015/
- Capture Date: February 07, 2016
Flowcrete has highly visible links in their content. Their links are in a highly noticable red color and underlined. Visitors can easily jump to other related pages.
Link Visibility Guidelines
Make your links:
- of different, high-contrast color than the body text,
- preferably underlined (this depends on the overall website design),
- change color when the mouse hovers over them,
- of different color if they are already visited.
Avoid using your chosen link color for any purpose other than for links.
Avoid underlining text that is not a link. Underlining text is a common practice for link recognition, so it will only confuse people.
References
- [ARTICLE] Guidelines for Visualizing Links, nngroup.com
- [ARTICLE] 15 Usability Guidelines for Designing Web Site Links, usabilitygeek.com
