Hey stupid, click here!
A couple of years ago, I wrote about the stupidity of using "click here" when hyperlinking. Fast forward to the current times and I can tell you that the stupidity still prevails. Now, Brian Clark at Copyblogger tells us how that stupidity is actually a good thing:
If you really want someone to click, tell them to click. Period.
He backs it up with some results from a Marketing Sherpa experiment which concluded that the words "click to continue" had the best clickthrough rates and then concludes that:
The lesson is clear. Not only should you use actionable anchor text if you really want someone to click, but you should also tell people to take the exact action you want them to perform in order to get the best response.
My theory is that the "click to continue" text probably had the best clickthrough rates because users didn't know where the moronic link leads to, and had to click on the bloody thing to find out.
Which just proves how ludicrous they are in the first place.
And if we extend the ideology that we should be telling people to take the exact action we want them to perform, shouldn't Brian's website navigation say "click here to go home", "click here to learn more about me", "click here to contact us", etc?
If you're thinking that that would look and sound pretty stupid, you're right.
Due to the large volume of spam, comments are disabled. If you have anything relevant to say, you can leave a comment via Twitter, or contact me directly.
About the author
I'm Ivan Lutrov and I'm the owner of Lutrov Interactive. I have 25 years of experience producing interactive work and I create cost effective business websites that are simple, engaging and easy to use. I practice what I preach and I say what I really think, even if it's sometimes not what you want to hear. Subscribe to the Lutrov Interactive feed via RSS and follow me on Twitter.