Comments on: When It Comes to Links, Color Matters

By: Das Google-Mißverständnis – Die wunderbare Welt von Isotopp via @koehntopp « urban-listening

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:02:18 +0000

[...] harte Daten haben kann – Marissa Mayer zum Beispiel ist bekannt dafür, daß sie einmal die Klickraten von 40 verschiedenen Blautönen hat Messen [...]

By: jdragon

jdragon — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:56:15 +0000

Just look at the link color on craigslist…hmmmm…clickity clackity…

By: links for 2009-08-30 « links and tweets

links for 2009-08-30 « links and tweets — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:24:57 +0000

[...] When It Comes to Links, Color Matters When It Comes to Links, Color Matters http://ff.im/-51LXh [from http://twitter.com/kenmat/statuses/2560637430 (tags: tweecious Google Microsoft Apple Websearchengine search SEARCHENGINE Opensource Gmail) [...]

By: Oskars

Oskars — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:21:06 +0000

well the “good old” blue link color has found it’s place deep in any computer users mind, it is obviously the “natural” choice to click on blue links…

By: Google’s Color Test on Click Through Rates of Links | YieldBuild Blog

Google’s Color Test on Click Through Rates of Links | YieldBuild Blog — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:09:48 +0000

[...] the click through rates of links. Google did a recent expirment with GMail that was covered by GigaOm on the click through rates of links by altering the link color. But there’s also the fact [...]

By: Libran Lover

Libran Lover — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:09:43 +0000

And the point of this post being...?

I read that the paid version Gigaom Pro was supposed to have more in-depth articles. Didn't realize that the free version would simultaneously move to shallow waters.

By: John Becker

John Becker — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:03:23 +0000

Well, people click on blue links because we grew up with it. Had it been green from the beginning; the tendency to click on green would have been higher. The monitors in late 90’s weren’t great at displaying various colors thus, it made sense back then to have blue links which could be easily distinguished.

By: John Becker

John Becker — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:00:30 +0000

Are you kidding? Gmail finally gave up old, stale simplicity and adopted new themes for no reason? Had it left on engineers to decide; they would have been toast. UI experience is an art too. There were MP3 players and slick smart phones before Apple entered the market. Had it taken google approach; it would have never been successful. Google search is relevant for now because of its brand advantage over other search engines. If you ask someone who is not in tech business to name a search engine other than google; it would be difficult for him/her. Look at how google news and finance pages look and compare them to yahoo news and finance. Saying that elegant design doesn’t matter is the stupidest thing.

By: henry

henry — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:38:25 +0000

are you seriously implying that Apple = Art and Microsoft = Commerce? or did you mean it the other way around?

By: links for 2009-07-09 « Jet Grrl

links for 2009-07-09 « Jet Grrl — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:15:04 +0000

[...] When It Comes to Links, Color Matters (tags: interwebs WebDesign) [...]

By: sample032

sample032 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:50:38 +0000

Stock prices? Apple was in a bad place when Jobs took back the reins. Since then, it has done quite well, especially compared to Microsoft, but that’s like comparing oranges to, well, apples. Even 10 years ago, Microsoft was an established company, signaled by its addition to the Dow. Apple was a struggling, mismanaged company. It made quite a comeback–mostly thanks to the iPod–but it had far more up-side than down-side potential. Microsoft, meanwhile, has been uneventful–exactly what’s expected from a Dow component.

There are a few telling things going on right now. MSFT outperformed AAPL in the past year; this might be a sign that Apple’s growth is peaking. APPL’s market cap is greater than newly-added Dow component CSCO, but its net income (profit) is less than both CSCO and MSFT. AAPL is still priced for growth, but its performance over the last year was unimpressive.

By: PXLated

PXLated — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:33:07 +0000

Trouble with this is all monitors display colors slightly differently - unless one uses calibrated only - so one doesn't really know what color people actually saw. But somewhat depends on the size of the test, do the results translate to the population as a whole or just those tested. And then there's color blindness in the visitors.

To a big degree it's Google engineers mentally masturbating.

In all my designer years, I've never met a male client that didn't prefer blue. Design a logo, make it blue, sold. Woman have been all over the board.

By: electricdave

electricdave — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:45:32 +0000

Blue is stupid - there I've said it. Maybe I have the design sense of a rat from the Seattle landfill, but green is clearly the most important color. Why? Because I said so. Don't need statistics from millions of users to prove me otherwise. snark

(I read that article about Bowman and thought he was bitter. He should have found a way to incorporate a sort of crowd-sourced design methodology so it matched the statistical methods in use. Then he would be a genius. Good designers are like gold, but you have to appreciate that speed trumps everything when it comes to clicks.)

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:45:14 +0000

This is all about the sub-conscious. HTML links were originally blue, so we’ve become conditioned to clicking on such blue links.

By: rick

rick — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:36:25 +0000

They did? Look at the stock prices of the 2 companies over the last decade. Look at the balance sheets. MS is bigger but both companies have won and in stockholder eyes over the last 10 years, Apple is the clear winner.

By: rick

rick — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:34:42 +0000

Not if the designer’s decision costs you million of dollars. Think about this from a business perpective – you can have one of the best designers on Earth working for you… or make an extra $10m (figure pulled out of the air). As a business, do you take the designer or the ten million? Right. You take the $10m. If it’s a much larger figure, the decision just gets easier. Design in a business has to serve the business – if it’s merely serving the designer, something’s off.

Google doesn’t make their money on awesome design, they make it on design that converts people – which for Google means clicking links.