Waste of space
When it comes to the web we have to be very frugal with our wording, and not clutter the screen with unnecessary words. I show one screen in our training taken from a government website that shows a long list of downloadable documents – each line is accompanied by ‘click here’.
How much less cluttered it would look if the unnecessary wording was stripped away and just the name of the report was hyperlinked.
Text-to-speech
Just consider how annoying it would be for those relying on text-to-speech (TTS) software when it mechanically and synthetically reads out ‘click here’ over and over again because of its repetition on a web page.
Waste of time
People are busy and simply don’t have the time to read unnecessary wording.
Patronising
Most internet users are web navigation literate, they know that if they don’t click they will get nowhere on a website. They instantly recognise that words that are underscored and perhaps appear in blue are navigation links, so ‘click here’ is superfluous.
Hyperlinks aid scanning
To speed the process of taking in a page of content at a glance – web writers use headlines, subheads, numbered lists, bulleting and hyperlink navigation. These are collectively known as ‘microcontent’ and greatly contribute to rapid text comprehension.
The eye will fly between blue underscored hyperlinks and the reader will gain some understanding of what is on the page. Using ‘click here’ embedded with other linked words significantly slows this scanning process.
Search engine placement
Replacing ‘click here for more information’ with relevant keywords relating to the content such as ‘content management’, ‘staff appraisals’ will help the process of search engine optimisation.
By using the keywords – they will be automatically indexed by the search engines. This will lead to more page visits as a result of the reader typing in these keywords and being offered your page to view.
Not everyone can click
Some users with repetitive strain injury prefer keyboard equivalents to using a mouse. There are disabled users who rely on ‘assistive technology’ that responds to verbal responses, or perhaps a touch screen, a pressure switch triggered by blowing into a tube, or microswitches that respond to available muscle action.
But, whatever the technology used to interact with the browser, disabled users live in the real and more able world – and are very familiar with the phrase ‘click here’ and so are unlikely to be offended by the use of this term.
Link accessibility
Some visually impaired web users have speech browsers that have a facility to collate links on a page so the user can tab through them. This helps them quickly assess what a page is all about.
But this also means that links will be read out of context. So it is important that the link wording is understandable on its own. Whereas ‘click here’, ‘next, ‘back’, ‘top’ are all meaningless without further explanation.
It is also important that each navigation phrase only points to a single location, and that the same phrase is not used several times for different linked material.
Click area too small
A common navigational mistake made on websites is not providing a large enough area for the mouse to click on. Expecting people to precisely place a mouse on just the two words ‘click here’ requires precise manual dexterity and that can be difficult for some people.
It’s can easily be resolved by hyperlinking a thumbnail image, the headline or the supporting linking text – and this makes websites much easier to use for everybody.