How many times have you seen ‘Click here’ on a web page?
It’s everywhere – so it must be OK, right?
Wrong.
It actually creates a poor user experience for all your website visitors, but particularly those with disabilities.
Let’s break down the top 3 reasons why it’s a terrible idea (and what to do instead)…
1. Accessibility
Screen readers
A screen reader is an assistive technology that helps users to navigate digital content. Screen readers translate digital text into synthesised speech or Braille, for those who have difficulty processing visual information on a screen. They literally read out the contents of a web page.
Screen reader users often navigate from link to link, skipping the text in between – tabbing from link to link is a way of skimming web content if someone is trying to find a particular section.
The technology relies on link text to understand where a link goes, and judge whether it’s of value. ‘Click here’ offers no useful information about the link, and it’s totally meaningless when taken out of context in a list. Here’s a visual example from the NVDA screen reader, to illustrate this:
Using URLs as hyperlink text is equally bad practice. URLs are painful when read out by screen readers, and humans find them incredibly difficult to scan too – so they increase cognitive load for everyone.
This video from Reading University shows a screen reader in action and perfectly demonstrates the issue with ‘click here’ and including URLs as text (make sure you have the sound on):
It’s not only blind people who rely on screen readers to navigate the web – also those with cognitive and learning disabilities, motor disabilities, repetitive strain injury, arthritis, those recovering from surgery, as well as people with other visual impairments. So think about the number of users who are negatively impacted when you use ‘click here’ for a link.
And remember – we want to remove as much ambiguity as possible for all our website visitors. It’s just common sense.
Neurodiversity
Web accessibility isn’t just about physical disability.
It’s estimated that up to 20% of the global population is neurodivergent. So around 1 in 5 people have a brain that functions, learns and processes information differently than what’s considered typical. So it’s crucial to include neurodivergence in the design and communication considerations of our websites.
Some of the biggest challenges for neurodiverse people using websites are related to sensory overload. Bright colours, automatic carousels and sliders, gifs, pop-ups and flashing animations can be hugely overwhelming and distracting for anyone with a neurodivergent brain.
10 ways to design for neurodiversity
But ‘click here’ also has a negative impact on the user experience for neurodiverse people. It lacks context, increases cognitive load, and hinders scanning, making it difficult for people to predict where a link will take them. This can create anxiety, confusion and frustration for any user, but particularly those who require clear, literal, and predictable information.
Clear navigation and signposting benefit all your website visitors. Links should be descriptive and clearly explain where they lead, reducing the anxiety of unpredictable, irrelevant, or overwhelming content.
Check whether your website’s fully accessible – book an audit with me.
2. Usability
It’s not just neurodiverse people who want to know where they’re going. Navigation, context, signposting are helpful to everyone using your site.
We know from years of research that, when reading online, people scan. They ‘forage’ for information, hunting for keywords as shortcuts to find what they need. Links stand out on the page (typically in blue and underlined) so they’re critical to foraging expeditions.
Navigation, context and signposting are helpful to everyone using your site.
Not just people with disabilities.
If all the links on your page say ‘click here’, foraging becomes more of a challenge, and requires more cognitive load (brainpower). The decision about whether or not to click on a link becomes far more complex – users have to search the phrasing surrounding the ‘click here’ link to piece together context. Make life easier for people. It shows respect and consideration as well as being common sense.
‘Click here’ also impacts readability, by creating clunky, unnecessary and overly long-winded text. Why use ‘Click here to download the file’ when ‘Download the file’ will do?
Device independence
It may sound obvious, but ‘click here’ also relies on mechanics. You can only click if you’re using a mouse – this makes far less sense when using a mobile device, keyboard, touch-screen or assistive tools.
‘Click here’ not only ignores those other modes, but it implies that they’re not supported. Why give people the impression that your (hopefully responsive and accessible) website only works properly on standard desktops?
Calls to action
Although it’s not in the form of a button, ‘click here’ is actually a call to action (CTA). And the most effective CTAs are action oriented (or goal oriented) – they lead with a verb and directly instruct users on what to do next, removing ambiguity and improving user experience. People respond to action words.
Although ‘click here’ is technically telling the user what to do, it’s considered a weak, passive and outdated phrase. And it doesn’t convey the value or benefit of completing the action.
3. SEO
As web crawlers cannot see, they navigate the internet in a similar way to visually impaired users. Search engines therefore use link text to help identify what a link is about, where it goes, and understand the relevance of a page – using ‘click here’ doesn’t provide any valuable information.
Word order matters too, so front-loading is important. Search engines place a higher value on the words at the start of the link text, so ‘download the PDF’ is much more beneficial than ‘click here to download the PDF’.
The strength and relevance of your links contributes to your ranking in search engine results, so these tweaks directly impact the visibility of your business.
Brand perception
While also being redundant and inaccessible, there’s actually a school of thought that considers use of ‘click here’ to be patronising and disrespectful to your users.
The internet has been a part of our lives for around 30 years now, so everyone knows what a link is, and how to use it.
As Lamar University says: Using ‘click here’ in your content can give your visitors bad impressions, such as:
- You don’t respect their intelligence enough to know what a link is.
- That your website or the content on it hasn’t been updated in years.
- That you only care about those visitors using a device that allows for ‘clicking’, leaving out visitors using screen readers and mobile devices.
What to use instead of ‘click here’
Use meaningful labels for your link text. That’s all.
Replace ‘click here’ with descriptive text that tells the user where they’re heading, or what will happen if they follow that link. Always ensure the link text makes sense within the surrounding content.
Some simple alternatives to ‘click here’:
- Download the report
- Schedule your visit
- Contact us
- Read the newsletter
- Read more about our best-selling product
- Log out
- Install software
How accessible is your website?
Hope you found this useful, and that it gave you more of an insight into the way neurodiverse users might experience your own website.
Book an audit with me to make sure everyone can comfortably use your website, even people relying on assistive technology – and widen your audience in the process.
Further reading – 10 ways to design for neurodiversity
