Abstract
Many websites adhere to their own custom style guides and no longer follow traditional usability standards such as the once ubiquitous, blue, underlined text link. Users may miss important information by not knowing which elements are clickable and which are not. The objective of this study was to determine whether or not an option to highlight all the hyperlinks (links) on a website would help users locate all of the page's available image and text-based links. All participants were shown two different websites and asked to click on all design elements that they thought were links. In the experimental condition, participants had the option of using a keyboard shortcut key that, when pressed, would highlight all the links on the website. In the control condition, this option was not available. Significantly more participants in the experimental condition found all of the links compared to the participants without the highlight option. If the design of a website prevents developers from implementing easily-discoverable links, developers should consider adding an option that can highlight all of the links on a website.
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