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tl;dr → use familiar patterns
Make the text objects look less like navigational tab controls.
The elements seem unnecessarily divided: Place the search field in the main header.
Make search look more like search.
Position matters
The subconscious factor making your test subjects want to tap those text objects is positioning. They appear to be tabbed ...
123
Well, since people are trying to interact with this information, I'd use it as an advantage. As mentioned by Mattynabib, it really makes sense.
However, if for some reason you prefer not to, the answer would be to make this snippets of information a homogeneous message. The way it is now, it looks like a mix of a marketing and an interactive element (hence ...
92
In carefully edited text, the choice to include the article depends on the meaning. Examples:
I saw a newt yesterday, dark with blue spots. Can anybody help identify it?
— Article not included: the reader guesses that the linked page is about newts in general.
I saw a newt yesterday, dark with blue spots. Can anybody help identify it?
—Article ...
78
My suggestion would be to make the Title and the image click-able. The reasons are as follows
The title is generally referenced as the link to go to the actual item and is generally click-able. You can see this in a number of sites including Amazon,Ebay and Google news where the title is click-able and is as the main link for users to go and check out the ...
54
Where was this first seen
This practice dates back at least to the earliest days of image hyperlinks.
For example, the Internet Archive's earliest snapshot of Yahoo's home page from October 1996 has a clickable Yahoo! logo.
Why has it become an industry standard?
1. Convention
Conventions are self-perpetuating. Given the ubiquity of this practice, users ...
52
The idea of 'click here' being a bad idea originated from data about how people visually scan web pages which show that people don't read online: they skim the page to get the key information. If someone is scanning, 'click here' (particularly if there are lots of them!) links are totally meaningless in isolation: the user has to spend time reading around ...
50
It's become standard because everyone does it.
Everyone does it because it's nice to have a 'home' link but it's not something that needs to clutter the menu, either. Hence the idea to just make the logo link to the home page.
Not sure if anyone can answer where this was first seen. But I recall doing it close to 2 decades ago so I think its been around ...
42
Your question is complicated in that it's embedded in a bad practice.
This Smashing Magazine article about why your links should never say "Click here" sums it up quite well.
"Click" puts too much emphasis on mouse mechanics, "here" conceals what is being clicked, and in your example, "go to" is implicit in the action of a link.
Assuming for the sake ...
42
The grey text actually makes them look more clickable as they stand out from the rest of the header. I would change them to the same color as the rest of the text (black).
Also, instead of "6 books Listed", I would use "Books Listed: 6". The colon subtly implies, "here's info" rather than "I'm a link".
30
The short answer to the high level UX question here is -- it depends -- so here are a few cases why a company like discourse might choose to put click counters next to their hyperlinks along with things to watch out for...
I'm new here what does everyone else click?
Sometimes when I visit a new restaurant I'll ask the waiter what most people order. This ...
30
or you can try dotted border; be sure to test it on the users though.
If it's a quick reference and no action (like selecting / scrolling, although you can do it on the pop-up with some effort) is required on pop-up, I would suggest to differentiate with actions in addition to the style:
Regular links (click -> another page)
Hover on link + help cursor (...
29
From a historical viewpoint, I suspect the reason is simply "because someone thought it would be a good idea".
In fact, I did a little bit of digging. The padlock icon for HTTPS links was first introduced to MediaWiki in 2004 as part of the then-new MonoBook skin by Gabriel Wicke. Specifically, it first appears (along with a generic link icon and special ...
29
A button performs an action. E.g. Save, delete, register, submit.
A link connects you to resource. E.g. a URL or a file.
Think of buttons as verbs and links as nouns.
That said, there are also other distinctions. Often a link is used where you would have a button, but where you want to de-emphasise the action. Often for secondary options or high risk ...
28
As I disagree with a lot of the notions here I am going to add an opposing view as well. Like most answers I agree that the image and title should be clickable, but in modern designs making the entire box clickable is quite acceptable.
Now, first I would like to point out that in the latest Youtube iteration the entire box is clickable:
Additionally I ...
26
Browsers render textlinks blue by default. Jeffrey Zeldman wrote an article stating Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, reached it at random:
http://alistapart.com/blog/post/why-are-links-blue
I can't find any information on why visited links are purple. It does however seems logical to me to choose a color close to the link color, ...
20
It's a heated topic to be sure, but the best insight comes from understanding the usage and intent of a user clicking a link and specifically how this relates to the work at hand and what is going on in the user's mind (i.e. what they are trying to achieve by clicking the link and how that relates to their workflow).
In general, if a link results in leaving ...
19
According to, literally, the first result when you google discourse click count, Jeff Atwood defends the click counter as a valuable signal for users to determine if a link is worth clicking:
The purpose of links is to be clicked, their entire existence is predicated on being clicked at some point, and showing the click data gives you, THE READER, valuable ...
19
Usually an article need not be a part of your link.
Except in the cases when it makes a difference in meaning. Usually it will be a definite article, like "The Times", "El Salvador", "Al Jazeera".
Sometimes you can see Portugal city Porto spelled as O Porto. This is because porto means just "port" in Portuguese, so the city is not just Port, but "The Port"....
18
I can't say if this is the actual reason it was chosen, but a reason why purple is a good choice is that, other than red, it has the lowest relative luminocity of any hue.
So, a purple will tend to appear darker than an equivalent blue. Assuming the background is white and the text is black, and assuming we expect people to be more interested in pages they ...
answered May 30 '14 at 16:01
user56reinstatemonica8
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Try a softer red with a harsh red border - like this:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
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You have a few options in terms of referencing pages...
QR Codes
URL Shortener
Using full URL
Search
No matter which method you choose to use, you have your pros and cons depending on your site's demographic.
QR Codes
Using a QR code is great for the younger, more tech-savvy, users.
They usually carry smartphones with them and can easily scan your QR
...
17
There are several studies studying users ability to understand icons, text and both. The results of these studies always come to the same conclusion. Double coding (text and image) is always the easiest and fastest for users. Look at the three images below, and decide which one would get you a beer fastest be fastest to recognize.
On a more serious note, ...
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Power users open links in new tabs and rarely use the Back button, while most users rarely open links in new tabs and rely on the Back button instead.
Patrick Dubroy conducted this study for his master’s thesis while working at Mozilla. You can read about the presentation that he gave there and the paper that he wrote for CHI.
In describing his ...
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Striking through signifies a revision or marking something as invalid. The established practice for visited link is a change in color, usually a less colorful or less saturated color from the original unvisited link's color.
Using striked through text is a poor choice, as it is ambigious: Is a striked link no longer valid? Is a striked link not recommended? ...
16
Find something easy to learn
This is an app so I assume your users are willing to take the burden of a little learning curve. With that in mind, adopt a convention and be totally consistent with it. They'll take to it quickly if it's clear enough.
I think (as I'm sure you do) that a text label would clutter your interface. The most compact yet self-evident ...
16
It sounds as if you are seeking a formulaic answer about a specific button pattern fit for an exclusive purpose and feel that this goal is not being met.
Straight off the bat, there is no such formula. But here are a few things to consider.
Link Buttons Are a Thing
Text-only, rimless buttons have become a fairly common interface element without being ...
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Jakob Nilsen about "Return to Top" Links:
Yes, "return to top" can be avoided, because the exact same
functionality is provided by simply dragging the scrollbar to the top
of the page. It's almost always better to rely on a single, generic
interaction technique so that users don't have to ponder the choice
between two alternate interaction ...
15
This smells a lot like a folder structure, where you can add as many levels and as many items per level as you please, with deep nesting.
I would imagine that a similar view would occur more natural to the user:
This mockup builds upon the idea of the user working "top down", thus the "add new item" element is at the bottom. The user could collapse ...
13
Although it makes sense for the banner image and the title to link to the event page, their affordance for clicking isn't as strong as that of a button or text link. That you can click on the image and the title might surface with a hover effect, but a button or text link is naturally clickable. However, the image offers a nice large target, so for someone ...
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