“What’s this?” Link & Tooltip
I just stumbled upon this interesting spin on the good old “What’s this?” help link.
In Wildbit’s Postmark app you’re greeted with a tooltip the moment you hover the “What’s this?” link. You can click to see the full help article.
Instead of forcing the customer to open a new page to get help, a small tooltip is showed immediately when the “What’s this?” link is hovered. Just a single sentence of help text, briefly hinting at what the features does.
Those in need of more help can still click the link to get the full article – the tooltip explicitly tell you “Click to learn more”. This is a crucial detail since your customers might otherwise think that the tooltip was the only help available.
Instantly displaying a small tooltip before sending people off to a new page seems like a great way to help those customers who only need a few pointers (the tooltip), while still catering to those who need all the help you can offer (the full help article).
User experience research, delivered twice a month
Join 25,000+ readers and get Baymard’s research articles by RSS feed or
Topics include user experience, web design, and e-commerce
Articles are always delivered ad-free and in their full length
1-click unsubscribe at any time
Related Articles
More E-Commerce Research
Free Research Content:
- Popular Articles · a listing of our most popular research-based articles on e-commerce UX
- UX Benchmark · benchmark with case studies of 93 major e-commerce sites ranked by e-commerce UX performance
- Page Designs · navigate 8,400+ manually annotated full-page screenshots categorized by page type
Products & Services:
- Baymard Premium · full access to all 582 research-based design guidelines, UX case studies, page designs, and review tool ($720-$3,000 / year, based on plan)
- UX Audit · get an in-depth analysis of your site’s UX, conducted by a Baymard researcher ($1,900-$9,700 based on scope)
Comments
© 2021 Baymard Institute US: +1 (315) 216-7151 EU: +45 3696 9567 info@baymard.com
DRossJanuary 2, 2011
This is used all over the web … and has for a few years.
Jamie, Baymard InstituteJanuary 7, 2011
You’re right, tooltips and “What’s this?” links to full help articles have definitely been used for a long time – it was the combination of the two that struck me as interesting. Using the tooltip as information scent for the full help article and perhaps even sufficient help for the technically inclined.