Category Archives: Content

Remove ‘Click Here’ for Better Link Text

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How many of you have linked to a webpage or document using the phrase ‘click here’? We’ve got about 830 instances across the University site. We know where they are.

Why is it so bad to use ‘click here’ as a link?

You might argue that it’s a strong call to action. You know exactly what’s expected of you when you see one. See our related blog post: 5 Ways to Improve your Calls to Action.

I think the negatives of using click here outweigh the positives. These are our top reasons for not using click here as link text.

We aren’t all using a mouse

Click here isn’t true anymore. Your user could be tapping, touching, swiping, tabbing or speaking to activate the link.

Also, most people using a mouse know that you have to click to do something: don’t be Captain Obvious.

Accessibility

Users of screen readers will often get a summary list of hyperlinks to select from. This is to help them decide where to jump to within a site.

Imagine how unhelpful it is to hear ‘click here, click here, click here, click here’ as your options.

Unless the user decides to read the whole page – they won’t get the context.

Search engine optimisation

We always get asked about getting to the top of the search results. The hyperlinks you use can help you achieve this.

Let me ask you then, how many times have you searched for pages that say ‘click here’? Google serves up around 2.4 billion search results for it.

You will never be number one for this term. You would never want to be number one for this term. So don’t use it for links within your site.

Instead, make sure you use strong, descriptive terms to link your content. How do you want people to find you? What words will they use?

Bad example: Click here to find out more about our English Language degrees.

Good example: Find out about studying our English Language degrees.

Get rid of click here using Siteimprove

Many of you use Siteimprove to keep on top of broken links and misspellings. But did you know that it also has a policy feature that allows you to target unwanted content?

We have a click here policy set up to show where it’s used in your website. We know that there are 830 instances of click here across the University’s website.

Let’s aim for zero! * 

* Siteimprove have been known to reward sites that achieve zero broken links/misspellings/policy scores with doughnuts.

Read our blog post on the Siteimprove policy feature.

Why not get access to Siteimprove (University Login required) so you can start fixing your content now?

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5 ways to improve your Calls to Action

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A Call To Action (CTA) is a way to get your reader to complete a task or reach a business goal on your website.

It might be as simple as a hyperlink or it could be an embedded form that you want them to fill in.

The words you use and the placement of the content will all influence whether you get the results you want.

Here are our top 5 tips to make sure a CTA works for you.

1.     Think about where you place your link text

We recommend adding links to further content at the end of a page, paragraph or sentence.

That way your reader has understood what you had to say and can make a decision whether to follow your link or not.

If you embed the link at the start of a section they don’t know whether to click first and come back or read first then go back to follow the link. Either way, you’re making them work harder.

Bad example: We have a Conference Team who provides help with managing and planning conferences.

Good example: We provide help with managing and planning conferences: contact the Conference Team.

2.     Make your call to action stand out

You could also use a different style or design for CTAs. We use buttons to help highlight them on the University website:

Example red call to action button from the responsive design

If you are using something that’s designed like this, be consistent with its placement. Our link buttons could become intrusive if we used them everywhere.

3.     Make sure your call to action is relevant to the page

Don’t include lots of links ‘just in case’ someone might find them useful. Think about what you want your reader to do next.

If you have a clear next step in mind and you add lots of extra links – you are reducing the effectiveness of your CTAs.

For example, on a page about booking to attend an event, imagine if you included all these links:

  • Book your place (essential)
  • Watch a video (a distraction at best – they might forget to sign up)
  • Find out more about the event (this link should be further up the page)
  • Contact us (why? The aim is to get them to book at this point)

4.     Be active and descriptive

Make sure the language you use encourages people to complete the action.  Use words they’ll be familiar with and include a verb if possible.

Examples:

  • Call us now: 000000000 (a call to action might not be a hyperlink)
  • Fill in our application form
  • Watch our student services video

You should also make sure that the text you hyperlink is descriptive. This helps with Search Engine Optimisation. Google will rank your content according to the words you hyperlink. I’m guessing you don’t want to be top for the word ‘more’:

Bad example: Learn more about research opportunities at Newcastle.

Good example: Learn more about research opportunities at Newcastle.

Click Here for… and Click Here for… are particular pet hates of mine. Don’t do it! We’ve a blog post coming up on why click here is the worst call to action you could use.

5. Measure success

Decide how you will measure the success of your CTAs. Did your carefully crafted words work? Did your readers pick up the phone, book their place or fill in your form?

The University uses Google Analytics to track use of the University website. We assess where people went after reading our content. How many people left straight away without following our links?  How many people completed an action?

You can also try out different combinations of words to see which ones are most effective. Why not try a link called “Fill in our application form” for part of the week and then swap it to be: “Apply now” later? Which one has the highest completion rate?

Get in touch

Do you write your Calls To Action like this? What sort of success have you had? Let us know in the comments – we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Read more

You might like to read about how micro content (often used on our CTAs) can improve your website.

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Why Deleting Old Stuff on Your Website is Good

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I bet one of these situations is familiar to you:

  • struggling to close an exploding sock drawer because it’s jammed packed full
  • slamming shut your wardrobe to stop an avalanche of shoes from escaping
  • repeatedly ignoring the message popping up in your email shouting that ‘Your inbox is full’

Yup, hands up guilty as charged. I’ve done this… actually all of these.

What do these problems have in common? They are visible, physical problems (especially exploding sock drawers). They impact negatively on your life; that jammed-shut drawer, all those emails clogging up your inbox.

These are things we know we need to sort out so they stop being a problem. But they’re often tedious tasks.

We have the same problems with websites…

Over-flowing sock drawerExploding socks

Websites can have the same too-much-stuff problem as our sock drawer. But the real problem is it’s often invisible to us.

With websites, the problem starts when lots of ‘stuff’ builds up over time. Old documents and images, defunct logos, old versions of pages etc.

You may think this stuff is harmless; it’s all behind the scenes. You don’t link to them or use them anymore…. right?

Nope.

Just because you have removed a hyperlink to an old document for example, doesn’t mean it’s gone. If that old version still exists on your site, it’s still indexed and found by search engines and people.

Do or do not, there is no try

Your website may seem to work perfectly fine – but behind the scenes the stuff cluttering up your website can really harm it’s performance, peoples user experience – and sometimes even your reputation.

And here’s why.

Imagine somebody wants to find out the latest information about our student accommodation. Using a search engine they type in ‘student accommodation Newcastle University’.

The results list all the pages and documents that have been indexed as containing this information on the University’s website. Alongside some page links, a PDF is listed – uh oh…it’s for 2013!*

How can people trust us if our information is out of date?

This is why deleting stuff is good.

Ideally you’d delete the old content each time you replace it with new content on your website. But if you haven’t done that (or you have inherited a website from a hoarder) or just don’t know where to begin, then don’t worry help is at hand.

Delete keyMinimalist mantra

The minimalist method of cutting out clutter is an interesting approach to take. Take shoes for example.

Group all the similar shoes you have; trainers, sandals, boots etc. Decide which pairs of each type do you wear most often and want to keep, then remove the rest.

This is easily applied to your website; documents, images, logo’s, old versions of pages etc.

Decide which ones you need to keep. They are:

  • the most recent versions
  • being linked to in your content

Delete the rest.

Keep calm and stop the ROT

ROT stands for redundant, out-of-date or trivial. Large organisations (like us) that have a massive web presence find this a problem. By taking a good look at your site and deleting stuff you can stop the ROT.

Don’t treat your website like a file store. Keeping stuff ‘just in case’ on your website is:

  • dangerous – it is still indexed by search engines and found by people
  • lazy – just save it elsewhere
  • harmful – our reputation is jeopardised by out of date content, and gives a negative experience for users

As part of Go Mobile we will audit each site in the programme, and identify ROT. When making our websites work well for devices with small screens, deleting old stuff we don’t need is vital.

If you want any advice about where/how to start, just get in touch.

There’s also a good article from Paul Boag about dealing with ROT that’s worth a read.

*Relax…this search works perfectly well in real life – no old documents being indexed here!

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Why do you have a Website?

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Why DO you have a website? Can you answer this question in around 50 words? Any bets you’ll find it hard.

Newcastle University has around 150 external facing websites.

Our best ones have an audience in mind, have a clear set of tasks or goals to support and we measure their success. They have a site purpose.

The worst ones exist because a new department or team was set up or we wanted to tell some people about something. These sites decay over time. They aren’t updated. No-one knows if they are supporting our business goals. They fill our web real estate with waffle and ‘just in case’ content. They have no site purpose.

Defining your site purpose

As part of our Go Mobile programme we’re writing a site purpose statement for each site. Grab a piece of flipchart paper and work through these steps:

  1. Know your audience

Who are the key audiences for your site? Brainstorm with colleagues to make sure you know who you are writing for. Be mindful of not just saying “everybody”. You’ll find it hard to prioritise content if you do.

  1. Tasks

For each of your audiences, think about what they want to do when they get to your site. What are their top tasks? Two or three will do.

  1. Business Goals

What do you want your site visitor to do? Business goals should be measurable eg increasing student applications by 10 % rather than being a task like “I want to apply”. Again, two or three will do.

  1. Content and tone of voice

Come up with some words and phrases that describe how you want to come across to your readers. Are you clear, complex, conversational or professional? How do you want them to feel: confused, empowered, confident or suspicious?

Once you’ve got all this, you’re ready to write your site purpose.

Writing your site purpose

We’re using an idea presented by Sara Wachter-Boettcher at Confab Europe 2014. You can find out more about it on her blog post: Content Mad Libs.

A Mad Lib is a fill-in-the-blanks exercise where, once completed, you have the beginnings of a site purpose. It looks a bit like this and comes in at around 50-70 words:

Fill in the blanks (Madlib exercise) for the Newcastle Web Team's website.

Corporate Web Development Team’s site purpose 

I’m not going to lie, some editors have found it painful to prioritise only two or three top tasks.

In some cases, we’ve explored whether we need more than one site purpose – more of a site section purpose if you like.

This tells me that some of our sites have too many audiences to support and perhaps need dividing up into smaller sites.

Content putter-uppers no more!

The site purpose statement gives our web editors a tool to prioritise content according to audience and business need.

Our editors aren’t just there to put content up on the site. Their role is to question, prioritise and rewrite.

So, when you get asked to add some content to a site, the answer isn’t just “yes, of course”.

You question the content: is it for my audience, does it support a task or business goal, does it need rewriting?

Then the content gets added. Or, more importantly, doesn’t, if it doesn’t fit the site purpose.

Have a go

There’s no need to wait for the Go Mobile programme to try and come up with your site purpose. Have a go using the steps provided. We’ve also got some templates on our website to help you (University Login required). Get in touch if you need some further help with this.

Let us know how you get on in the comments. Happy Madlibbing!

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Why ‘Under Construction’ Notices are Bad Practice

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In the early days of the web ‘under construction’ notices or animated construction worker images were common on websites if an organisation didn’t have any content to add to a page. These messages have fallen out of fashion but have been replaced by messages such as ‘coming soon’ or ‘information to follow’.

The terminology and formatting of this message may have changed, but the outcome is the same – a dead end for users.

under construction notice

A dead end for users

Imagine a prospective student has clicked through to a page on your website expecting to find something out. Instead of an answer or information to help them complete a task, they are greeted with nothing more than an ‘information coming soon’ message.

How do they feel? Disappointed and frustrated. What do they do? They leave.

Perhaps they come back at a later date to check if the page has been updated but it’s more likely they will go somewhere else to find the information they need or worse… go to a competitor’s site.

People generally go to a website to find an answer to a question or to complete a task. An ‘under construction’ notice doesn’t tell your customer anything and is therefore a waste of their time.

Damage to credibility

‘Under construction’ notices can also damage the credibility of your website. They make the page look sloppy and unfinished. This consequently reflects badly on the organisation, giving the impression that the organisation is uncommitted and unprofessional. It could also mean that users don’t trust the other information on your site.

Bad for SEO

Search engines also respond badly to ‘under construction’ pages. If there’s no content on a page the search engine won’t rank it very highly.

Worse, if the page has a meaningful title containing key words that people are searching for, it may come up in search results. Your reader goes to read more on the page only to discover that it contains no content. This is harmful to your organisation’s credibility.

Solutions when waiting for content

If it’s business critical to advertise something (eg funding opportunities or a new research facility) before the full details are available you should add relevant information rather than a blank page. To do this, you should:

  • think about the information you already have about the funding, research facility etc
  • add relevant signposting to another site if appropriate
  • include contact details for questions until the content can be added to the site
  • update with further information as soon as it is available

Final thoughts

Finally, if you don’t have any meaningful content to add to the site don’t add a new page. A blank page or a page with irrelevant information is more harmful than excluding information altogether. You wouldn’t publish a brochure containing a blank page with a generic ‘coming soon message’, so the same rules apply to the web.

Visit our website for help on planning web content (University login required).

Image credit: Under Construction Grunge Sign by Nicolas Raymond, www.freestock.ca, licensed under CC BY 3.0

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