The Secret Lives of Links

http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1315

Excerpt:

Trigger Words

• On the Walgreen’s site, 21% of people go to photos, 16% go to search, 11% go to prescriptions, 6% go to pharmacy link, 5% go to find stores. Total traffic is 59% for these five links. The total amount of page used for these 5 links is ~4% of page space. The most important stuff on the page occupies less than 1/20th of the page.
• This violates Fitts’s law. The bigger and closer, the easier a target is to hit. So we’re often using the real estate of Web pages poorly.
• Make real estate reflect the importance of links. Link copy needs to communicate what the user will get. The links have to take the user to where they want to go.
• Nobody goes to a Website just to visit. They have a reason. Trigger words serve the goal of the user. They trigger the user to click/take an action. When trigger words are well done, they get the user to the content they want and signal where to click.

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