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Comment by sp8 | Hacker News Reader

I remember being taught never to use "Click here" (which has the same issues) about 15 years ago. It staggers me that in this day and age of responsive design and tableless layouts, we've still got the same old problems...

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Wasn't Click Here proven to be effective in testing? I swear I read that at some point.

I always go with something like _Download the annual report (380KB PDF)_ rather than the client-suggested _Click here_ to download the annual report. But I think a combination was proven to be effective.

I remember reading that putting "click here" in banner adverts produced better click-through rates, as sad as it may sound. I can well believe that the same is true of links, though it ruins the page for screen readers (I went on some training for this once, which advocated link text exactly like your former example, and was told that its common practise for experienced people with visual disabilities to simply listen through the list of links to more quickly navigate to the information they need).

I guess an element of that would be down to the fact that a banner and (or image, in general) doesn't necessarily look clickable without "click here". Text links should always be able to avoid that problem, though.

Why is that sad? It's a very clear call to action, and is very unambiguous.

(I realize that it's probably less so when you start talking about accessibility, but I don't know much about that. :/)

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