[gregjor]

> But people won't know where to click?

> It's not 1995.

I agree in principle with the article. But I have spent time reading help desk tickets so I know that average users often don't know where to click unless you push their nose in it. I can't count how many times users have said "I was afraid to click the link" or "I don't know where that button will go" because the UI presented links and buttons with meaningful titles instead of imperative commands. I just have to watch my parents try to navigate a web site to feel deep humility about how I think people use the web. They got stuck in 1995 I guess.

This kind of advice should come with A/B testing on actual users. I think we would all facepalm at the results.

[philsquared_]

Agreed. We have many "old" people that use our website and I can tell you for a fact that the "click here" is less confusing than some random blue link (which at this point has lost it's meaning because of seo keyword stuffing).

Not to mention "click here" is a call to action and a random blue link is not. Call to actions are important.

[AlienRobot]

"It's not 1995" is really a terrible argument, because https://xkcd.com/1053/

You have people today who don't even know what a link is.

[wileydragonfly]

Well, it doesn’t help matters when CIOs berate us at town halls “the entire company blew up literally because someone clicked ONE LINK they shouldn’t have!!!!” and I’ve sat through many of those “blame the user” sessions.

Two factor has resulted in similar berating. “How dare someone click APPROVE at 2am?!” Well, they were trying to silence the phone when they were attempting to sleep. Why are you allowing pushes outside of business hours without an additional layer of security? Maybe that giant APPROVE button isn’t the best default option at 2am?

[gregjor]

Sometimes you can't win. I worked on a site that had what I call a punitive UI -- buttons and links that would throw up a modal alert telling users they shouldn't have clicked on that. When I started changing the UI so users didn't see controls/links they shouldn't click on, users complained that "the web page changed," as if they had memorized exact pixel locations and I caused their confusion. Pigeons pecking at the green dot.

Numerous studies tell us that people don't read web pages, or don't read much of the text on the page. A big "click here" helps in that case, a call to action as another commenter wrote. As long as the page or email just has one call to action.

[littlekey]

Yeah, this sounds nice in theory but "For additional order details, go to _your account_." doesn't explicitly answer the question of how to go to your account, which will not be obvious to many people.