Links are the fabric of the web.
In this post I discuss the importance of link styling, and in particular, text links. I emphasise that link styles form a core prerequisite in designing a great user experience.
Users love well designed link styles
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But lets not kid ourselves… users are unlikely to turn to their friends in a bar and say ‘did you see those links, they were hot’. No, but they might say ‘That website is great’. In many cases a website is ‘great’ because it is easy to use, with well designed, intuitive link styles.
Users want the following things from a link style:
- links should be easy to recognise : a user should be able to quickly and easily scan and identify links within a web page
- links should be responsive : links with hover states provide further visual confirmation that the text is a link
- links should communicate behaviour : if a link is pointing to an external site, than the link should be styled in a way that indicates this
