Naming Your Bookmarks - An Exercise in Information Scent
At Web Directions North 2007, Jared Spool held a workshop on usability where he talked about the importance of how you name stuff on your page. How you name your links, your calls to action: that all matters. You’ve got to name them with what he calls “Information Scent”; the link must suck the attention of the user towards itself. You must name the link what the user is looking for.
The user enters a page with a specific word or phrase in mind. Jared calls that the “trigger word” (Gerry McGovern calls them ”carewords”). Designing an easy to use web page has that principle at its core: use the user’s trigger word in a link, a button, a call to action, a navigation item.
Browser bookmarks as navigation
While I was never a big fan of the usability of the bookmarks menu and the different ways you get to your bookmarks, I’m a huge fan of the bookmarks bar. It’s a navigation menu, one that I create myself. It exposes the bookmarks in my peripheral view - no need for digging in menus. I chose the words for each item of this menu (all except one which I’ll correct below) to work for me and my mental model.
Trigger word
I open my browser with a task in mind. And the task is usually a word or phrase (although sometimes it’s a picture or a relative location the item on the page). This word occupies my mental space while I look at my bookmark bar.
Take this example. I want to get into Highrise, 37signal’s contact manager app. My trigger word - the word I have in mind when looking at the page - is “Highrise”.
But there’s a problem. The bookmark isn’t named “Highrise”. By default, it’s named “37signals Launchpad” (I know you’re not stuck linking to their launchpad, but stick with me for a second).
I want to keep the ability to have that link open the launchpad, because let’s say I have several Highrise and Basecamp accounts, and the launchpad still has value for me.
However, that bookmark’s name doesn’t mean anything to me. I scan the bookmarks menu looking for the word “Highrise”, but I can’t find it at first glance. I then look at each item individually (or in the relative location where I expect the bookmark to be found) and I ask the question in mind: “Is this it? Will it bring me to Highrise? No. Next.”
Renaming your bookmark
I could just call the bookmark “Highrise”, but I use the same link to get to Basecamp as well.
Is there a common name that encompasses both names? 37signals? Not close enough for me. Productivity? Sounds like a silly choice, but isn’t this the process we go through when choosing how to group elements together under a category name in a navigation menu? Common pitfall.
Wouldn’t there be another way to have Highrise and Basecamp both represented under the same bookmark? How about “Highrise, Basecamp”:
It doesn’t matter that the comma and the space make the two words look like there are two different items. All that matters is that I see the word “Highrise” when scanning the navigation list, and that when I click on it, I have a high confidence that it will take me where I need to go.
The link has strong “Information Scent”. It draws me into a high-confidence click.
It’s not the user’s fault
The link titled “37signals Launchpad” made me think twice before clicking on it. ”Productivity” would have made me think too. They both make me pause, interpret, second guess, compare the link with other links on the rest of the page or in the menu. They make me feel as though I’m a poor computer user, that what I’m looking for is an exception to the rule. That I don’t have the right word in mind.
When you choose a name of that next bookmark you save, think about those words you use on your site. Think about the user’s point of view, their trigger words. Then rename your links.
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