Links - Current

    • Links should be short and set up the reader so that they know what to expect when they click or tap to follow the link. "Click here" or "Learn more" are short, but aren't descriptive enough to be clear. They also don't clearly set expectations. "Learn more about our plans" works better. Aim to keep links short, but don't sacrifice clarity.
    • For actions, start with the verb: Go to Accounts is generally better than Accounts
    • Shoot for links that are 3-4 words
    • Avoid linking the full text of a sentence
    • Use button for a call to action; use link to go to another place

    Relative vs absolute text links

    Text links are orange and underlined. Use relative links when linking within the Premera site. Use absolute links when linking to an external site.

    Relative Link: /wa/visitor/find-a-doctor/24-hour-nurseline/

    Absolute Link:    http://www.starbucks.com

    Icons after links

    Certain links have small icons that automatically follow them. These are coded in the javascript and you don't need to manually add them.

    When to set a link to open in a new window

    Documents, pdfs and links to external websites should open in a new window.

    As links:
    Use an area code and dashes when displaying phone numbers. All phone numbers should be linked so someone on a mobile device or tablet can touch the number and call. 

    The code looks like this: Phone Number code

    As words:
    When using a phone number as a word, such as 877-PREMERA, add the area code and phone number afterwards. (The actual phone number should be coded as a link as described above.)

    It should look like this:
    877-PREMERA ( 877-722-1471).

    Adding a page

    Changes need to be reviewed and approved by UX team. Consider when adding content:

    • Can the new content replace or be added to an existing page?
    • Global nav, secondary nav, Page titles, H1 titles and URLs need to match

    How to build URLs

    Follows same patterns as navigation, use dash (-) between words, and should ONLY be lower case. For non-secure pages do not use special characters like space,$,%,&,!,#,+,=.

    DO: https://www.premera.com/wa/member/manage-my-account/forms/

    DON'T: https://www.premera.com/wa/Manage_my_account/Forms/

    Changing URLs

    Changing URLs has significant impacts on our pages showing up in search and breaking external links to our websites. Please use 301 HTTP status code redirects when a page is removed, replaced or consolidated. The forwarding URL should point to the most relevant page; this is called mapping URLs. If a match can't be found then point to main landing page or home URL like Premera.com/visitor.

    Removing URLs from search results

    Please work with Karlyn and Sarah when removing one or more pages. Updates will need to be made in the webmaster account.

    • If the page no longer exists, make sure that the server returns a 404 (Not Found) or 410 (Gone) HTTP status code. Non-HTML file (like PDFs) should be completely removed from your server.
    • If the page still exists, use robots.txt to prevent Google from crawling it. Even if a URL is disallowed by robots.txt we may still index the page if we find its URL on another site. However, we won't index the page if it's blocked in robots.txt and there is an active URL removal request for the page.

    Subheads

    Do not use links within subheads, and especially avoid linking the full text of a subhead! Links formatted in such a way are easily overlooked-especially on our site, where H2s are medium blue.

    Drop down menu and left navigation

    navigation