don’t link to the same page twice

just a quick usability rule of thumb before i get ready for bed.

if your eyes came across this ad, what would you think? what would you do?

what is torture ad

well, if you were me, you’d wonder what the heck is going on in that freaky picture? is someone pouring gasoline onto a rag over someone else’s face? what kind of messed up shit is that? was that in the news? what have i missed?

suffice it to say, the advertisers who created that ad have earned their keep for the day. my eyeballs have stuck. so i read the text.

What Is Torture?
Every few months a new story of torture by American troops or agents emerges in the media. Usually…More

and i freeze. there are two links. one seeming to explain “what is torture” the other seeming to explain a controversial new torture technique involving gasoline and a rag. agh, i’m torn. both links are so inviting and yet subtly different. which do i choose? what do i do?

at which point i revise my original praise. those advertisers should be fired. or at least hit over the head with a copy of some overpopular web usability text.

so i hover over each link, checking the url in the status bar, trying to discern whether they will indeed take me to the same or two different pages. this is not easy. the links are like an inch away, the urls include a string of 7 numbers, and i’m on a thinkpad. turns out the links are the same. pish posh.

which brings me to the moral of this post: don’t link to the same page twice, especially in such a way that users might expect each link to lead them in a different direction. a link is part of the user-interface, and creating two slightly different widgets that do the exact same thing is confusing. if you’re an advertiser, i’d imagine doubling the choices a user needs to consider in order to follow an ad must be like a cardinal sin or something. in other words, don’t do that.

thank you, and goodnight.

Monday, May 30, 2005 11:56pm
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4 comments

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Ruby
5/31/05 8:13am

Actually, linking to the same place is pretty common and (I think) a pretty normal thing to do. On any of my blogs, you can click the title of the post or the ‘more’ link to read the whole thing. I don’t really care which one people use, it just depends on at which point in reading the blurb they decide they want to click.

Brian
6/1/05 7:37am

I have found that many computer systems that allow only one way to accomplish a task are unnecessarily restrictive. They requires the user to conform to the thought patterns of the originator. Whereas having multiple paths to achieve the same result allows flexibility for different personal cognitive approaches. Although we all “think” we don’t all “think” in the same way. Therefore a good system is made to optimize for the norm yet to be inclusive of the breadth and depth of the majority.

robin
6/1/05 7:26pm

Hmm…I didn’t even notice the image until after reading your commentary. I saw the word “torture” and that drew me in (a major concern of mine these days).

Alice
6/9/05 5:32am

Yeah…I disagree with you Justin (and I’m hesitant to respond to this ridiculous post, by the way). But if I’m on a webpage with stories (news or otherwise), I’m inclined to think that the title being hyperlinked is the full story and the “more..” is for those of us who weren’t immediately drawn to the title link (because we needed more information in the first paragraph), but some people would immediately hit the title link. For another example, I read a lot about Anne Bancroft the other day and the first article I read I clicked on the title link because I needed immediate information. After that, I was trying to determine more information about her marriage to Mel Brooks, so I was reading synopses and opting for the “more” link if it seemed to be going in the right direction for me. I’m as dorky as you are!! Bah!