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thumbarger
Posts:156
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| 03/19/2008 1:10 PM |
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I ran into the following blog post by Reshma Kumar from the WebGuild blog today and thought it would be an interesting discussion topic.
So what are your thoughts?
Should all things blue on the web be links and all links on the web be blue? While in the offline world green means go, in the online world it is a well recognized convention that blue is our cue to click. But with the ever-evolving web, how is this standard faring?
- Corporate Sites. The vast majority of enterprise sites I looked at adhered to the law of blue links - Microsoft, HP, Cisco, IBM, and Intel. The anomaly was Oracle.
- News Sites. CNN.com, CNET, NYTimes.com, and WSJ.com all sported blue links.
- Consumer Sites. Amazon, Apple, eBay, MSN.com, Yahoo, Google, Walmart, and Petsmart are all bullish on blue. An exception I found was Target.com.
- Social Media Sites. YouTube, Flickr, My Space, Facebook all maintain blue links. But popular blogs HuffingtonPost, TMZ.com, and tech rag ValleyWag.com don't have blue links.
- Politicking Sites. HillaryClinton.com, BarackObama.com, and even JohnMcCain.com have blue links. So, clearly this rule transcends political persuasions too.
Of course, it also depends on the type of links, positioning, context, etc.. I am, of course, referring to the standard body copy links. Some sites even omit the border="0" on images thereby rendering the blue border on images to illustrate their clickability. Many sites use multi-formatting on their links to visually communicate their click states. And these links can come in all shades of blue. There is the Intel blue, big blue IBM's blue, and the Microsoft blue. Blue links are in fact the defacto fail-safe color of choice for links. Even usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, follows this model.
Does this mean that sites with non-blue links are doomed? Not at all. While it is the color of choice for links, links are popularly manifested in a myriad of colors. Many well-known sites have successfully accomplished this. It is the implementation of those links to appear as links - either by way of underlining or some other visual cue such as a symbol - that become important but such links can and do work. A lot may depend on the target audience and genre of site. There are many examples of Web 2.0 sites and teen sites that do different things that work as well. But tread carefully with this before deviating from the norm.
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LMarine
Posts:28
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| 03/24/2008 9:34 PM |
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I would agree with the article. Sure, more could have been said about knowing the target audience and their tasks, but the concept is acceptable.
I would add that, in cases I’ve seen where they deviated from the norm, they did not deviate properly and the product suffered dramatically. So, if you do plan to deviate, make sure you do it right!
Larry
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lucybuykx2
Posts:26
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| 03/25/2008 2:20 PM |
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| Blue works well because it allows the eye to read across with minimal interruption while still being distinct enough to show a link. Compare the orange used on Twine which is painful to read. |
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bge777
Posts:1
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| 04/07/2008 11:24 AM |
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This is not a standard that I am aware of.
Blue has been the default colour that browsers use for links when the link colour is not otherwise specified in the HTML or CSS. It can be tricky to assign different colours to links because some browsers will use the default colours unless you expressly set different colours for each state of the link: active, visited, etc. Blue is the safe and easy way to go.
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davidguido
Posts:3
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| 04/10/2008 7:29 PM |
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Since blue was set to be the browser's default color, it has been engrained into everyone's minds as a 'standard'. In turn, it has the greatest affordance over any other color. So for the sake of consistency and training, I'd say stick with blue. But if you have a strong brand color, for example 'red' at Target.com, that color could be just as strong.
On a related topic, the underlining of links has an even bigger affordance for clickability. |
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LMarine
Posts:28
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| 04/11/2008 9:34 PM |
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| By the same token, we've seen cases where users tired to click on blue text that was NOT a link, which completely frustrates them. So, if it's blue it should be a link, if its underlined and a different color than the rest, it should be a link. Anything else just confuses the users. (Note that I didn't say that if it is a link...) |
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mlong
Posts:1
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| 04/30/2008 2:54 PM |
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No , they don't have to be blue but my users expect them to be blue, some of my users get confused when they aren't blue (and underlined), I haven't found any compelling reason for them to not be blue (and underlined) and when I did make them any color other than blue and underlined my user tests showed no measurable advantage over leaving them blue and underlined.
So for me and my users, blue and underlined they stay.  |
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