Link Me!

Jakob Nielsen received his Ph.D. in human-computer interaction in Copenhagen from the Technical University of Denmark. He was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer from 1994-1998 and his chief responsibility was increasing web efficiency. Nielsen’s work and books have revolved mainly on what makes websites functional.

In First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye Nielsen explores how internet readers gather information on the internet. Research was conducted using 80 participants, the majority of which were under the age of 30. The study had two tasks-first, view the first eleven characters in a link and determine what would be found at that link and second, view a list of 10 truncated links and attempt to perform a specific task from those links. The research revealed that links only need to:

• Allow users to confidently predict what they’ll get if they click.
• Be clearly differentiated from the other links.
• Not be misleading or promise too much.

The value of strong links is that consumers or viewers of your page are more likely to click on the links if they have a strong assumption that they know what the link will lead them

This screenshot from Eco-Pro is an example of good links.

too. Eco-Pros is an example of good links because link descriptions are succinct and descriptive. Improving links can result in a potential source of increased revenue because time is money, and the less time people have to take to read your link, the greater chance they will click on it and thus potentially purchase something from your website. Tony’s Links is an example of bad links on webpages because they are too long and very general.

This screenshot from Tony’s Links represents an example of bad links.

Although this study was interesting, I am uncertain of the benefits of knowing the reading patterns of internet users. The study mentioned that although concise, distinct links are best,

In real life, links aren’t truncated on the page. Even if users see only the first 2 words or so during their initial scan, they can immediately read more if their eyes stop on the link.

I would argue that the additional second it takes for a reader to complete reading the link to gather information will not be a deterrent to selecting a particular link. It would be interesting to compare longer links with shorter links and determine if perhaps a longer more descriptive link is selected more.

The second point the article makes is that when reading lists, people tend to read the first few lines very closely and then skip down the list reading only the first few words. Based on this data, I would argue that if the information was written in a paragraph more knowledge would be gleamed because readers would read several lines intently before beginning to skim. If there were 3 descriptive lines in a paragraph in comparison to a list with three short lines, more points could be made in the paragraph. However, from personal experience I find reading bullet points much easier to learn information because the main points are separated and distinct.

Overall, is it more important for internet users or website creators to be aware of the reading habits on the internet? I would say it is more valuable for the reader to be aware of reading habits so they can try to compensate for the natural tendency to glaze over certain words and paragraphs. On the other hand, poorly constructed webpages make it difficult for any reader to gain the maximum amount of knowledge, regardless of their attentiveness. Therefore, there must be collaboration between websites and readers to maximize the knowledge absorbed by the reader.