Overview

Links are closely tied to navigation. While navigation refers to the structure of the site and the patterns by which users traverse the site, links are the mechanism by which they move from one place to another. Successful link structures can help users navigate the site more effectively.

During our testing, we learned that the success of a link depends on:

• How well the user can predict where the link will lead.
• How well the user can differentiate one link from other, nearby links.

Two Extremes: A Comparison of Links

Let's start by looking at two sites that use very different approaches to links: Edmund's and Disney. Edmund's did significantly better than Disney in our study, and links may have been one reason.

At one end of the spectrum, the Edmund's site uses long text links in a bulleted single-column format, as shown in Figure 3.1. Notice that the site designers even added a sentence of descriptive text when the link wasn't clear enough.

Figure 3.1: The Edmund's site has very long links in a single column. The links are almost verbose in the description of where they lead.

At the other extreme is the old Disney site, shown in Figure 3.2. This site uses much shorter links in a three-column format. There is little or no additional description about what the links are.

Figure 3.2: The old Disney site uses very short,...