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The hyper links containing the word "Click Here" is against the principles of Usability as the whole focus shifts towards the mouse and further it does not guide the users about the information of content that he is going to access.

In India , lot of users still are not very familiar with basic features of Web as India is still in the development stage in terms of using Internet. And so i have observed that a huge chunk of users in India don't understand that a blue text with underline signifies a link. Whenever I use "Click here to Read" instead of "Continue Reading" (In my page which lists down synopsis of 4 to 5 articles) , I observed that users start accessing to the content by clicking on that hyper link.

So i want to ask that under such scenario whether i should still avoid "Click here" or there is any other way out

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  • Good question @Arjit . I am more interested in ... "And so i have observed that a huge chunk of users in India don't understand that a blue text with underline signifies a link." ....How did you find that?
    – Prashant Dubey
    May 25, 2015 at 5:03

5 Answers 5

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You're raising an interesting point, but there may be more going on than a lack of familiarity with using the web. How did you observe the huge chunk of users in India interacting with links and what they do and don't understand? The specific content and layout of the page also may have some effect, and then it's possible that users do understand that there are links but don't want to follow them. To really get to the bottom of this you should run some usability testing, or at the very least interview some users.

"Click here" links are a fairly straight-forward call to action, but the usability issue with them is not so much that the wording is mouse-centric and the lack of a descriptive target, but it's often a sign that a link may not be the most appropriate control in the context. Sometimes a button may be more appropriate, depending on what you're asking the user to do.

Then there's the whole phenomenon of articles using way too many links or an abundance of short and meaningless, or even worse, automated links that are mainly used in a misguided effort to optimize a site for SEO rather than the actual user. Inline hyperlinks are effective, but users are sensitive and don't want to be taken away while in the middle of a sentence, and even experienced internet users can develop something like hyperlink fatigue if they're used too frequently and senselessly. Sometimes, footnotes are the better choice for long articles. Hence, if you use a "Click here to find out more" link after a paragraph you can get a better response than if you embed the link inline in the middle of a sentence.

If the only difference is the wording, then I would always opt for descriptive links over "Click Here" links.

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I would suggest a solution of a button instead of link as users have more familiarity with buttons rather than Descriptive Links due to usage of buttons on desktop and PC software

Option 1) Swap your Continue Reading link to a BUTTON saying "Read more here"

Option 2) Even if you want to use just links then try changing your link text to "Read more here" and make it stand out of the other text like making it bold or italic etc...

Buttons can be easily spotted and can gain user attention better than a link so in your situation i would use a button, not too flat but one that looks like a button

Language Perception Problem : There is one more factor in play here which is "Less understanding of English language. I guess that the Description of a button itself could be tricky as we all might not have same understanding of "Continue Reading" as i myself am from a developing neighboring country and English is not our Primary language

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Besides just having a pleasant user experience, UX involves helping direct people to certain goals. Cultural differences should be taken into account.

If your goal is to have users read more, then you already have the A/B tested data necessary to choose what to show to Indian users.

The UX field has many guidelines, but these are not strict rules. Only doing actual user research for your field/niche will tell you what works and doesn't.

Since just linking "Read more" isn't that great for SEO, another suggestion that you can try is to keep the regular linked contextual text and add " (click here)" also linked for places that have a higher click-through rate when you A/B test. This may also help train new Internet users that underlined text can usually be clicked for an action.

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I think the needs of the particular audience outweigh general design principles. For example, if designing an interface for visually impaired people, you would probably make the fonts thicker, have larger buttons, and use a theme with more contrast. Hence, if your audience is more likely to interact with the "click here" links you should use those.

You might also want to run tests with both styles to see if your users really do interact with one of them more.

Also, if it's possible within your design you could try a button instead of a link which would make it clearer that the user is to interact with it. This is what skeuomorphic design has done for years up until recently.

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Also too many click here on a page is confusing to any user. You should make this a bit more descriptive as in

  • Click here to read more about usability

next link can be

  • Click here to read about link usage for non-technical users
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