Should this text say "click here"?

Question

Should this link to activate:

• Be duplicated?
• Say click here, when I could be on mobile, and not clicking?
• Be a button instead, to imply interaction?

This email mentions clicking the link three times. "All it takes is a single click", "Click here" and "If the above link is not clickable".

I know that email clients are very picky and mean but surely there has got to be a better way. In Mailchimp we regularly send out newsletters and we use an image button (it could say "Verify your email address") as a link button. Seems to work fine in most browsers.

Answer 1

Great question Amelia,

• Should the link be duplicated? Yes - if the email client does not handle HTML markup, it would be a lot easier for the reader to copy paste the text version of that full link without worrying to copy it out of the HTML tag.
  • In addition, if eMail client supports HTML, many of those clients automatically convert a link into a clickable link (ex. gmail does that today)
• Should the link say "Click Here"? No - it's a bad practice. There was a good article written by smashing magazine: Why your links should never say 'Click here'. It is fairly old article, but nevertheless it is best practice to follow those guidelines for usability. In the example you brought up the link label should say "Verify your email address", just like you stated.
• Should the link be styled as a button? It depends - the screenshot you posted uses a common design pattern that you see on most of the websites and emails today:
  • Links are blue color and are underlined (which implies that element can be interacted with
  • If your intent is for the users to click the HTML link, you may entertain the idea of styling that link as a button to grab immediate attention of the person who is looking at the email. The button becomes your primary call to action. If that is your intent, then yes, you want to style the link differently to differentiate it from any other link in the email.
  • IMPORTANT: Given the screenshot, since you only have two links - it is not enough of a justification to use a different style for that link. If your email contained several links all serving different actions - I could see adding a primary and secondary CTA styles to those links.