I was recently asked to look at this site, HeyDJ.com, and give it a helping hand usability wise. My first impression was that I liked the header. Clean looking, easy on the eyes color wise, and the logo gave me the impression I was visiting a music site. Then I looked down below the menu at the content, and noticed the site had no links. There is nothing wrong with that, it just seemed strange to me. All content, and no where to go? Oh, never mind, I was wrong. I just didn’t see the links the way I am used to seeing links.

My Name is Cliff

I’m leading this post to an incredibly bad joke my dad always used to tell. “Hey, my name is Cliff, drop over sometime.” Why? Because I see the trend in hyperlinking as a similar stupidity. Maybe I should have titled this paragraph as “All American”. Band Wagon jumpers following the lead of the misinformed or trendy. Over the past year or two not underlining hyperlinks has become a common occurrence, and I don’t like it. It’s not what visitors expect, and it lacks visual clues. Why would you deny your visitor that?

So what is wrong with this dance, music, records, and CD site? They didn’t underline the hyperlinks. Neither is this site you say. Well you are half right. On my left menu I have a list of links. It is nothing but links, but it is also a clearly defined menu. Everywhere else, are well defined links that are underlined. Take a look at the DJ site though. Wordy content with tons of valuable links all hidden within the content. For the average web surfer, whom skims for content, this site is nothing but reading material. It doesn’t look like a store. It is a store though, so that is a big problem. When I was asked to look at their blog, HeyDJ Blogs, I had a hard time finding it. Yet another link hidden in the footer without a simple underline.

Should you always underline a hyperlink? Maybe, but I would say no. Whether the link is underlined or not really isn’t important. What’s important is whether or not the visitor can clearly tell what your are doing. Mixing content with links and adding no visual clue leads to mine-sweeping, and nobody wants to do that.