Often forgotten and overlooked, the links within your website copy might seem like a trivial thing, but how frustrated do you get when you click a link and it doesn’t go anywhere?
Links are crucial to retaining your website visitors and their overall user experience. You obviously put the link in to help people find extra information, whether to take them to another page on your website, or to an external site, so it’s vitally important to ensure they are kept up-to-date.
Working links are fundamental to the usability of your website and make it easy for visitors to quickly find the information that interests them. It also helps search engines index your information effectively. Poor links can be detrimental to your site, it confuses and frustrates visitors and you can lose out on potential conversions too.
Accurate navigation is equally important. Use precise navigation text that accurately portrays the corresponding pages so people know what they are going to get.
The easiest and most effective way to test your site’s links is to check them on every page of your site. Look at your website as if you are the customer and navigate around your site, clicking all the links to make sure they are still relevant and active. Get someone else to check your site too, because you know your site inside and out it’s good to get a different perspective on it sometimes.
It’s extremely important to manage the links to external sites because the website could have been removed, or the information you have linked to may have been changed. This emphasises the need to regularly check your links!
Your website is a powerful marketing tool for your business and you want the first impression someone gets of you to be a good one. Continue to test and tweak your links to ensure your visitors get the best experience possible and you are getting the results you want.