Article Idea:
The confusion of embedded links
suggested by Gareth David Griffiths on 2006/03/06
Links. We all know them and we all use them and, lets face it, a fair amount of work has been done on them. However, our idea, whilst relatively small, wants to shed some light on how embedded links within paragraphs work and/or are perceived.
We do a lot of user-testing and when it comes to websites which have many links embedded within paragraphs we have noticed that users don`t actrually like them. Through questioning we found that the links break up their train of thought as they actualyl either read the paragraph differently or end up following the links and either:
a) get completely lost within the site
b) completely forget what they were wanting there in the first place
We propose to run a small research project whereby we try to ascertain the impact of embedded links on a user’s understanding of the text and whether the readability is seriously affected by them. A comparison will be made with links at the bottom of the page. This will be fully ineractive and users will be able to traverse the webpapges as normal
It may be that users prefer a sort of combined efort, with a number of important embedded links combined with external links at the end of the article.
We are familiar with the work already out there but it has always been on static pages and has not trully identified whether it has a negative impact on the user’s experience of the webpage.
Want to see this idea turned into a story?
5 people said yes. | 0 people said no.
Patrick Stapleton
8 Reputation points
Posted 2006/03/08 @ 05:32AM with
To my mind this is an interesting idea and would very much like to see the results – nice one.
john john
0 Reputation points
Posted 2006/03/12 @ 14:51PM with
I’ve been wondering about this myself lately, and would be very interested to hear what your results are, please keep us informed.
Donna Maurer
165 Reputation points
Posted 2006/03/19 @ 21:43PM with
Sounds interesting.