eBay’s clever “click here” unsubscribe link
This is the footer of an email I recently received from eBay. I wanted to unsubscribe from the newsletter because I don’t care about eBay’s weekly promos so I scrolled down to look for an “unsubscribe” link. Hmm
Take a brief look at this. Notice how clearly “Learn More”, “Privacy Policy”, and “User Agreement” can be seen, but can you find the link to unsubscribe? Notice that they use the arbitrary filler “click here” for the unsubscribe link. So very clever, eBay. I’m impressed actually.
See, In web design, it’s a clear no-no to use arbitrary link text such as “here” or “click here”. It’s bad for the end user and it’s bad for search engine optimization. (still, you see it all the time). ”For more details about our next event click here” versus “Take a moment to read about our next event”.
Obviously eBay knows how to make a user-friendly link, but they very intentionally make the unsubscribe link a bit hard to find by using poor technique. Clever or shameful?
