"Click Here" Has No Place in Software
“Click here”, is probably the worst text anyone could choose for a link/button. I say “probably” because I’m sure there could be worse choices for a given context. Regardless, please don’t use, “click here”…ever.
“Click Here” is Often Redundant
If you design your software appropriately, it should be obvious what action is necessary to invoke some feature. If it looks like a link or a button, you click it. Therefore, if you feel the need to inform your users what action to take, you should reconsider the design of such elements.
Your software’s links/buttons should be designed in such a way that users can easily identify them for what they are. Once they identify them, they know what to do with them. So, use colors, underlining/overlining, borders, icons, depth, and other techniques to help users identify your links and buttons.
Also, do yourself (and others) a favor by using more than just color to differentiate links from other text. There are plenty of people out there with color vision issues that prevent them from distinguishing a subtle color change (even a dramatic change is hard to see for some color blind individuals).
What Text Should be Used Instead?
You know that verbiage you included just before, or just after, the phrase, “click here”? That’s where you should look for the text you should be using for your link or button instead. Consider the following example sentences with the infamous “click here” link/button.
- Click here to join our newsletter.
- To view related products, click here.
- Click Here to Close
Let’s see what these sentences should look like instead.
Proper Context
Now, your users have context right there with the link/button. They know what clicking it will do now. They don’t need to be told to click it; they need to know what will happen if they click it.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
There is an added bonus to using the proper text for your web links; SEO. All the top search engines categorize pages based on their content. Some of the best sources of that content are the page title, headings on the page, and the text used to link to the page. A bunch of “click here” links to a page do nothing to help search engines determine what that page is about.