I really enjoy this kind of silence.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Silence is Golden
I've been busy (hence the verboten Friday post). A high-profile, long-term, work-over-Christmas online API for which I did information architecture just went live. I've gotten some nice compliments from people in-house; so have the developers who made it real. But the most gratifying response has been from the end-users: almost total silence. The user base consists of highly-placed professionals who can escalate issues in their sleep. And for the most part, they haven't been doing that. A few data glitches (NOT MY FAULT!!) and otherwise nothing.
I really enjoy this kind of silence.
I really enjoy this kind of silence.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Click Here!
The wonderful Prelinger Film Archives shares this great instructional short from 1927, instructing customers how to use a piece of new and unfamiliar technology: the dial telephone.
Yes, every obsolete technology was once brand new, and people had to learn how to use it.
...but after a short while, the novelty and mystery largely wears off and people don't need to hear about things like how to pick up a receiver without disconnecting the call, what a busy signal means, or the many marvels that can be achieved by means of cut and paste commands.
It is in this same spirit of "OK, OK, we get it now!!" that I propose the following modest rule:
From this day forward, anyone who encloses with a hyperlink the words, "Click Here" or any variation thereof should be thrown in a deep ditch and have nasty things dropped on them by passerby.
Seems reasonable enough.
Now allow me to contradict that rule completely. Get the nasty things ready for dropping. If you are including links in the text of a web page and it's not essential that your users click on them (as I did in this blog post), by all means link to a nice descriptive noun. However, if you are writing a web email, or a landing page that wants to prompt a single, desired user action, go ahead and say "Click Here" in a big orange banana button-- with my blessing. Study after dreary study shows that doing this improves all-important click-through rates by many depressing orders of magnitude.
Don't believe me?
Want to see for yourself?
Click Here!!.
Yes, every obsolete technology was once brand new, and people had to learn how to use it.
It is in this same spirit of "OK, OK, we get it now!!" that I propose the following modest rule:
From this day forward, anyone who encloses with a hyperlink the words, "Click Here" or any variation thereof should be thrown in a deep ditch and have nasty things dropped on them by passerby.
Seems reasonable enough.
Now allow me to contradict that rule completely. Get the nasty things ready for dropping. If you are including links in the text of a web page and it's not essential that your users click on them (as I did in this blog post), by all means link to a nice descriptive noun. However, if you are writing a web email, or a landing page that wants to prompt a single, desired user action, go ahead and say "Click Here" in a big orange banana button-- with my blessing. Study after dreary study shows that doing this improves all-important click-through rates by many depressing orders of magnitude.
Don't believe me?
Want to see for yourself?
Click Here!!.
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