Effective Use of Links

One of the most common mistakes new webmasters make is having a website that might be appealing visually, but is difficult to find information. One good way to avoid this is to decide on a goal that you want each visitor to do on each page.  Below we have a few tips to make your website easier for your visitors to navigate:

If you missed our previous article, please see the Optimizing your Site for your Visitors tutorial.

• Make links stand out – To make sure that your visitors can easily find your links, try having them in a different colors or underlined.  That way at first glance the visitor knows which text are links, and which ones are not.
• Make the destination of the link clear – Common links such as “click here!” or “more information” do not give the visitors enough information to know what is supposed to happen.  Make your links have description such as “Read more of my reviews here” or “A list of books currently for sale” so that your visitors know exactly what is on the page. This is typically known as a call to action.
• Ensure all your links work – This sounds simple, but everyone has been on a site that they clicked on a link and receive a 404 error.  Nothing drives away customers more then a website that does not function as it should.  If you are still working on the site, make sure you have a note on your front page that says the site is still under construction to help explain any broken links.
• Use anchors and targets on your links – If needed on your website, you can use links to direct your visitors to a different part of the page or by opening a window in a new link.

If a website visitor gets frustrated on your site or has trouble finding what they need, they will quickly move on to the next site.  That is why it is important to have your website as easy to navigate and find information as possible.

For more information on making changes to your site see Making the Most Out of Your Web Design Revisions.