I rate myself as a savvy user of web and as a tester, I have started critically evaluating usability issues of web. As a web administrator I did my best to design[1] very easy to use and maintain website.

 

I am following trends in web designs and web usability and I am reading a book called Web Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed [2] written usability guru Jakob Nielson. I also follow his bi-weekly Alertbox articles regularly[3].

 

After sometime I also want to start reviewing websites from a usability perspective. I like this because it is interesting to watch websites and their usability.

 

Meanwhile I have come up one of my own Usability issue which I will discuss in this article.

 

Providing hyperlinks is power of Internet. You can link content within your site and across sites anywhere in your text and provide users power of navigation. But when it comes to content rich sites, too many links are rather distracting. Number of links within a text should be avoided or should be kept minimum. 

Instead references can be made at the bottom of the article and put a reference to the article. I have compared[4] how the text will become more readable my using this article itself as an example. After reading this article try reading another version of the article . In the above sample text it is very easy for me to hyperlinks for references 2,3 with one link pointing to the book on Amazon and the other reference pointing to website related to the article. 

If I avoid putting the link there and give the link at the bottom of the article, it enables the reader to finish reading and then focus on the reference material. Inline links JUMP at us and distract us. It forces us to remember that there is a hyperlink which we should follow. It is a burden to reader. By keeping the references at the end of text, it allows users to navigate at their convenience. 

I found this practice good in my own experience and started following this usability as web administrator. 

Summary

Content rich websites should reduce number of inline links so that focus of reader is retained and users stay for longer time on the websites. There are other factors that effect readability but this is one of the important factors to be kept in mind. 

Related Articles:

[1] Article on Design of easy to maintain website
[2] Web Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed: Buy Book on Amazon
[3] Alertbox Articles: Useit.com
[4] Version 1 of this article which is less reabable.