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Home > Guidelines > 3. Cook up hot links. > 3j. Announce the new with special links. |
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3j. Announce the new with special links.
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Keep users up to date on content changes. When appropriate and practical, tell users what content you changed, and when you changed it. This information will help them find new material easily. You may want to provide a What’s New section that is easily accessible from the page, or link directly to the new material from your home page. You may also want to indicate new content on a particular page with graphical cues. —IBM (1999) The Web is a fluid medium. Update pages as time goes by to reflect all changes. Statistics, numbers, and examples all need to be recent or credibility suffers. —Sun (2000) Boldly promote your most exciting content with size, color, animation, and/or screen position. Minimize less important content. …. Let people know what is coming soon on your site. They may not be able to get to this week’s issue, but a good teaser might convince them to visit before missing next week’s update. Emphasize that sites are frequent and timely by referring to important dates and date-stamping…. —Microsoft (2000) See bibliography: IBM (1999), Microsoft (2000), Nielsen (1999d), Sun (2000) |
Other ways to make links hot 3a. Make clear what the user will get from the link. 3b. Within a sentence, make the link the emphatic element. 3c. Shift focus from the links or linked-to documents to the subject. 3d. Provide depth and breadth through plentiful links to related information within your site. 3e. Establish credibility by offering outbound links. 3f. Make meta information public. 3g. Write URLs that humans can read. |
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Resources on writing links Heuristic Online Text (HOT) Evaluation for Links
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