Website visitors are notoriously impatient and will swiftly abandon any website that fails to make for an easy browsing experience and broken links are just one such frustration that often forces them to look elsewhere.

An all-singing, all-dancing website is fine as long as it’s working properly but if visitors have difficulty getting around the site because of broken links or links that don’t go where they are supposed to, then all the dancing and singing in the world won’t prevent them from leaving. 

In a previous post, I said that a broken link turns into a very effective customer repellent which can be especially costly if the link in question is part of the buying process so it’s vitally important to make periodic checks to ensure all your website links are in full working order.

The same problems arise with links that although may be working properly are not immediately noticeable to visitors because they may be hidden in the copy albeit unintentionally, but the bottom line is if they can’t be easily seen, visitors will rarely take the trouble to search for them but the end result is the same – they will leave your site.

Taken from an earlier post are a few pointers on how to make sure your links are doing their job properly.

Colour and Underline

As you want links to be easily seen it’s important that they are highly visible. Incorporating them into block copy without changing their colour and underlining them is missing the point entirely because they couldn’t be any more camouflaged if you tried. Links are there to direct visitors where you want them to go so disguising them is defeating the object.

Descriptive Links

It’s always a good idea to tell visitors what kind of information the link will take them to and using click here or more details doesn’t do that, so if for example you sell camping equipment and wanted visitors to look at a particular kind of cooker for instance; instead of click here, you could use something like ‘Discover the latest innovation in portable gas stoves’. Note that there is no need to make the whole line into a link so only ‘portable gas stoves’ is underlined.

Test Regularly

Don’t rely on visitors to report broken links because as soon as they discover one that doesn’t work, their first action will usually be to try and find what they want on another site, so testing is anything but a waste of time if you want them to remain on your site and not a competitor’s.

Great web design is one thing but websites depend on links to get visitors from one place to the next as quickly and as easily as possible and like anything else they need regular maintenance to ensure that is exactly what happens so checking your links is just good sense if you want to keep those visitors browsing your site and not another.

Until next time.

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