Blog
28 August 2008
To click here or not click here. Tips on writing web content.
Writing ‘link text’ is an important part of managing your websites content. Done well the practice can improve usability, accessibility and search engine rankings (SEO). Done badly, with little thought it can be detrimental to the success of your website.
The most common technique used for link text is the insanely popular “click here”. This method provides no information as to the actual content of the link; this can harm the usability of a site. Using meaningful link text rather than "click here" makes it easy for users to quickly scan a webpage to find links that might be of interest to them. “Click here” provides an action, but no reason. (Instead, for incentives and calls to action we would suggest a graphical button designed to increase visual awareness).
Link text example, Pomegranate would not say:
" For more information on our packages, click here."
Link text example, Pomegranate would say:
" Learn more about Pomegranate’s search engine optimisation packages."
For accessibility reasons “click here” link text is extremely unhelpful for people who use screen readers to access a webpage, commonly blind users and people with poor sight. This technology ignores a website’s navigation and focuses solely on the content, creating lists of links enabling a user to quickly navigate the content. The overuse of “click here” will result in a meaningless list of links.
Many of the major search engines use the phrases used in link text to assist with the indexing of web pages. Therefore using "click here" to identify the linked pages content will harm the indexing of your website. Pomegranate strongly advises using descriptive link text to increase the prospect of users finding your pages.
The W3C advise "don't say click here”....
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01 August 2008
Amazon launch ecommerce platform
Amazon is extending further into the service space, launching two new services in the US that let smaller retailers use its ecommerce systems and payments technology on their own sites.
Amazon Simple Pay is a set of payment-only products that allow customers to use payment information stored in their Amazon.com account as a payment method on other retailers' websites, allowing the consumer to get through the checkout more quickly.
Checkout By Amazon is a more complete shopping cart solution, featuring 1-Click ordering, order management, shipping and sales tax calculations — all in a highly familiar to the customer format....
Is this a case of the big boys claiming to be helping the little people, or on a conspriacy basis, is this just another chance to reach deeper into retailers pockets at the same time having a good look at trading patterns and dare i say it..steal the odd customer???...
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