Writing links for scan-readers

April 8th, 2009

Just read Jakob Nielsen’s article on writing links to ensure they work well when read online. In summary, he recommends:

  • Beef up the first 11 characters of the link text
  • Use specific, meaninful, action-oriented terms
  • Use plain language
  • Clearly differentiate links

The advice is based on testing truncated links from a broad range of sites with 80 users.

See: First 2 words: a signal for the scanning eye

Dey Alexander Research , ,