As most people know about me, I hate it when the phrase “click here” is used as a hyperlink. As a matter of fact, it made #6 on my top 10 list of dos and don’ts for Web sites. Well, I finally found the perfect example of why “click here” links are a bad idea. Take a look at this screen shot from the Consumer Reports Web site. Notice on this page there are three, yes THREE, uses of “click here.”

This totally threw me off and took me at least 10 to 20 seconds to get my bearings and figure out what to do. Instead of having three links labeled “Sign up,” “Log in,” and “Customer Service” so that I could quickly scan the page and in less than a second know exactly where I needed to go, I was forced to read the entire page.

Now, you might say that I am being whiny and impatient about a small amount of time, but in the words of Vito Corleone, “This was completely unnecessary.” There are enough challenges to overcome on the Web, don’t make irritating your users one of them. Avoid “click here!”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.