Collaborate Like a Pro: Hyperlinks

This old-school technique can increase user adoption

Sometimes simple, old-school tricks can make your collaboration platform much easier to use. Take hyperlinks. Simple. Old school. And perhaps the most straightforward way to help users find specific pieces of content.

Dan Keldsen of Human 1.0 said it best in a recent Central Desktop webinar: “The Web was invented almost 20 years ago, so why don’t we actually link content together? Hyperlinks are not new. Instead of instructing people to ‘go find such and such,’ just make it a link.”

This concept was hammered home at Central Desktop’s Collabosphere user conference by one of our power users, Carl Frappaolo of FSG, a consultancy firm that partners with foundations, corporations, school systems, nonprofits and governments to solve social issues.

He talked at length about how his organization uses hyperlinks to take information out of the heads of individual consultants and make it accessible to all. For example, on a workspace dedicated to a particular account, he prominently links to its Salesforce.com record. That way, any consultant – whether they’ve been there two weeks or 20 years – can tell how long that account has been an FSG customer or who sent the last proposal.

As an added bonus, from Salesforce, he links to the appropriate page in the collaboration system, so the user can seamlessly move back and forth between the two systems.

You too can collaborate like a pro by using hyperlinks effectively:

• Think like a user … especially an inexperienced one. Ask yourself, what is the user trying to do or trying to find?
• Cut your content into bite-sized chunks. If employees are looking for a vacation-request form, they don’t need to read the entire 65-page HR manual. All they need is the page or two that relates to paid time off.
• Be specific, not global. If the user needs sales collateral for a particular product, don’t link to your corporate home page, link to the product overview PDF.
• Put links front and center. In the main areas where your users congregate, add links to the items they need the most. Instead of burying the links in copy, think of them as navigational aids.

Granted, it’s not sexy. It may even take you an extra minute or two to set up.

But when you make it easy for users to find exactly what they’re looking for, you give them a reason to keep using your collaboration system. And in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about?