We’ve never recommended using “click here” in any broad context — and I certainly haven’t done so here.

If you’d revisit the comments, you’ll find a bit more clarification on our dislike for “best practices” thinking. As Chris suggests above, they’re often helpful as a place to start, but thinking in rigid terms has the danger of skewing one’s perception of what’s important when it comes to testing. In fact, all that’s being recommended in this piece is that people TEST their assumptions.

I believe you’re referring to Jeff Sexton’s article on persuasive links, which was a follow-up to this one. There’s been no change in our stance; only more clarification.

Tomorrow, we’re announcing a contest in conjunction with two other respected blogs. Five winners will be selected to have us test link verbiage to improve conversion on their landing pages. We hope you’ll keep reading, and would love it if you entered.

As marketing optimization consultants ourselves, we advocate testing anything and everything. It can’t all be tested immediately, though, so it makes sense to start with all the ‘best practices’ we can find and then optimize from there.

Have you seen Jeffrey and I? We’re glad to do a little tackling and blocking for you.

As for the “best practices” usability crowd, well, yeah… you had to see them huffing and puffing down the war path straight at me.

No intimation intended. I liked your piece, but it evoked the clamor we often hear from the “best practices” crowd. Now that you’ve had me look at it with fresh eyes, I definitely overreached. When I wrote that, I wasn’t thinking of what you said in the blog post, but of how it might be interpreted. Too bad I didn’t phrase it to reflect that, um, minor nuance.

I’ll revise.

“The problem with case studies like this is that, if they look at them as anything but directionally interesting, people tend to revert to ‘best practices’ thinking. (Stay away!) TEST your assumptions, then try another combination of words.”

You’re exactly right. There’s no such thing as “best practices” when copying from others. There’s what works for you, your context, your customers. And what doesn’t.

And you also know I never said what is intimated in that sentence, right?

Yes,”Click to continue” is what was tested, but the significance seems to have been placed on the direct action: The click.

That being said, I’m glad you explained your reasoning behind why “continue” works better than “article” in this case. It’s possible that the other bloggers and I got too hung up on the active verb, but I’m still not convinced that it matters. (Not sure I’ll be able to convince a self-described “XNTJ” but I’ll do my best. )

Here’s the point: Results from an “in-house” test like this can be both seductive and misleading. What’s interesting isn’t the exact combination of words themselves, but that they were able to achieve far better results just by changing a few words. Sometimes clients find that hard to believe, but it’s true. And, considering how we’ve been trained to act online, “Click _____” might as well be “Click Here”. That’s what I took from Brian Clark’s piece, and — if I read him correctly — I agree.

The problem with case studies like this is that, if they look at them as anything but directionally interesting, people tend to revert to “best practices” thinking. (Stay away!) TEST your assumptions, then try another combination of words.

Just because “Click to continue” beat the other two (generic) phrases means it’s better-than, not optimal — nor does it mean people reading about it should go changing all of their email or landing page links to “click to continue”.

Enjoy when you posting links to other case studies too, checking those out now…

My take on ‘click to CONTINUE’ working better than the ‘read more’ or ‘continue to article’ was that continue is an innocuous word, whereas a lot of people don’t like reading or think it’s work, and even if they are reading, don’t remind them that they are or will have to after they click. Likewise, ‘article’ brings the person’s attention back to the larger context of what they’re doing, as opposed to ‘continue’ which allows them to keep their head down and their brain engaged on the exact same track that brought them to the link.