Making coloured text links stand out and obvious that they can be clicked on

Question

This is a redesign of my website:

As you can see, its largely a work in progress; I'm trying to do a flat user interface design.

I can tell you now that I am in no way a designer or UI/UX expert. I'm a developer; traditionally useless at design, but giving it my best shot.

You can see on the main content that there are three links, under the title 'Latest blog posts'; I have made them the same shade of red as my header, but I'm not sure that it looks right, is it OK?

• Should it be more contrasting?

• Should it be the standard blue?

• How can I make it obvious that they are click-able links?

All suggestions are welcome.

Answer 1

I think that it's not immediately obvious that they're links. Nothing wrong with that though and they'll realise if they hover over it.

I'd just add a fail-safe option where you've put [...] as a standard (blue) HTML link saying Read More or something similar. Nothing wrong with two links to the same content.

Answer 2

Color continuity always helps design.

Using the same color as the header background is a good choice. There's enough contrast to read the links clearly and the color differentiates the links from the standard headers ("Latest blog posts").

Answer 3

You could add an arrow or a bar to emphasize the links more. To me, as they stand, they look like headers only (although I like the cleanness).

You could also hyperlink in your descriptions (repeat the title) so that if someone doesn't see them as links, they can catch the hyperlink.

eg: In Learning Java - Introduction, I decided to...

Dominic's suggestion of 'Read More' is a good one also.

Answer 4

Link are traditionally underlined. If you keep the underline they will really standout as links.