[intro]When you have completed this Guide, you will know how to hyperlink images and text to different places both externally and within your EKM online shop. [/intro]

[summary]

[/summary]

What is hyperlinking?

A ‘hyperlink’ is the name given to a piece of text, a word, a graphic or an image that when clicked, will take you to a different place - a target - either within your shop or a completely different website.

There are two kinds of hyperlinks. These are:

  1. Internal links = These are links that point to different targets within your EKM online shop, such as a Product or Category Page, or a Webpage.
  2. Backlinks = Also known as ‘inbound links’, ‘external links’, ‘inlinks’ and a host of other similar names, these are links on external websites, blogs and social media which link directly to your EKM online shop.

Both are good for your shop’s profile. Backlinks are good for search engine optimisation, as a lot of backlinks indicate to search engines that your online shop has a certain amount of authenticity and will give it a higher position in search results. Of course, where the backlinks are situated also has a part to play; backlinks to your shop on a directory, for example, have limited value (especially if the directory itself is low quality in terms of popularity and content), whereas a backlink from a blog - which search engines recognise as social media and therefore generated by humans and not bots - is a lot more valuable.

Internal links within your EKM online shop are a good way to offer your customers additional information should they need it. For example, if you sell a Product that has a large amount of documentation with it, such as user guides and Health & Safety information, if this information was published in the Product Description it would flood the Product Page with text, which may put some customers off.

Instead, it would be more effective to provide a hyperlink to the information, like this:

This allows the customers who want to see the information to access it easily, whilst customers who don’t want to see the guide won’t click the hyperlink.

Hyperlinking Images

Hyperlinking is also a good way to influence a customer’s journey around your EKM online shop. With the rise of tablet and smartphone use, customers have become accustomed to seeing very ‘image-heavy’ websites and online shops and it’s second nature now for them to click an image to be taken somewhere. With that in mind, hyperlinking the Design Images on your Homepage allows you to affect how customers move through your online shop. Rather than reaching immediately for the menu, you can get them to a specific Product or Category Page by creating an image to represent where you want them to go and then hyperlinking that image.

You can hyperlink Design Images and images that you have added within the Product Description or on Webpages.

Hyperlinking Design Images

If you are using a Legacy Theme or your EKM online shop is in Custom Mode, the following steps detail how to hyperlink Design Images. However, if your EKM online shop is using the Aerial Theme, the Design Images can be hyperlinked within each section. This Guide lists all of the available sections on the Aerial Theme, so you need to click the relevant link for the steps for each section. 

1. To do this, click the Shop tab, and ensure that the Edit Design button is turned on:

2. Then you need to click the Edit Element button for the Design Image you want to hyperlink and select Edit from the drop-down menu:

3. Then you need to click the Content tab:

4. You’ll then see a field beneath the Image, where you need to add your Link Address, which is the target of your hyperlink; it’s the place you want to send customers to when they click the image:

5. You now need to get the link to add to the field. To do this, open a separate tab on your browser and visit your EKM online shop the way a customer would - via the domain name. Go to the Webpage, Product or Category page you want to send the customer to and copy the address directly from the Address Bar of your browser, like this:

6. Then when you have the URL copied, return to the browser tab and paste it into the Image Builder field, like this:

7. Because the target of your hyperlink is internal - in that it’s within your EKM online shop - delete the first part of the address after the domain name, before clicking Save & Close:

Hyperlinking Images within a Product Description or Webpage

1. If you want to hyperlink an image that’s in a Product Description or on a Webpage, the process is a little different. To begin, open the Edit Webpage or Edit Product window, and double-click the image you would like to hyperlink. This will open the Image Properties window:

2. Then you need to click the Link tab:

3. This time, you’ll see a URL field where you need to add the target URL you want to send your customers to. To do this, open a separate tab on your browser and visit your EKM online shop the way a customer would - via the domain name. Go to the Webpage, Product or Category page you want to send the customer to and copy the address directly from the Address Bar of your browser.

Once you have copied the URL, you need to return to the browser tab where you’re looking at the back end of your EKM online shop and paste the URL into the field provided:

[tips] If you are creating an internal hyperlink - within your EKM online shop - you only need the last part of the URL, so instead of:

evestestshop.com/felt-bowler-hat-4278-p.asp

You would use:

/felt-bowler-hat-4278-p.asp

However, if you want to hyperlink to somewhere outside of your own EKM online shop, you need to use the full URL, such as:

https://www.ekm.com

[/tips]

4. When you have removed the first part of the URL (if it is an internal hyperlink), click OK:

5. The blue line you can see now around the image indicates it's now been linked somewhere. Then you simply need to click Save & Close on your Edit Webpage/Edit Product window:

Hyperlinking Text

You can hyperlink text on your EKM online shop too. This works well within Product Descriptions, Webpages and blog posts, where you can offer the visitor a pathway to additional information without necessarily having to use a hyperlinked image.

1. First, you need to go to where you want to add the hyperlinked text, so open up the Edit Product/Webpage/Category window and highlight the word you would like to hyperlink:

2. You then need to click the Hyperlink button. This is on the top row of grey buttons near the middle:

3. This will open the Link window:

You’ll see a URL field where you need to add the target URL you want to send your customers to. To do this, open a separate tab on your browser and visit your EKM online shop the way a customer would - via the domain name. Go to the Webpage, Product or Category page you want to send the customer to and copy the address directly from the Address Bar of your browser.

4. Return to the browser tab displaying the Link window and paste the URL into the field provided:

5. As the URL is internal, remove the first part of the address, and then click the green OK button:

6. This will return you to the Edit Product/Webpage or Category window. Click Save & Close:

Linking to Files in the File Manager

For some Products, user guides and any documentation can be much too big, or in the wrong format for you to add to a Webpage. In those cases, you would be best adding the information to PDF files or similar which can be uploaded to the File Manager and hyperlinked to text on your EKM online shop.

Follow this Guide to upload files to the File Manager, and then instead of pasting an internal link or backlink in the URL field, simply paste a link to the file instead.

To find the file address, simply hover over the file to see it revealed. You can then right-click the file to copy the address, which then can be hyperlinked to some text or pasted into the relevant part of your spreadsheet:

[tips]

Do

  • If writing a blog post about a new product on your EKM online shop, be sure to include the Product Image within the blog post and hyperlink this to the Product Page for that item.
  • Ensure that the target address within your EKM online shop - where you’re sending the visitor via the hyperlink - is public and not set to be hidden or unpublished.
  • Ensure that the hyperlink leads to relevant content. Ask yourself if the target of the hyperlink would be useful to your customer - if not, then do not make a hyperlink; superfluous hyperlinks make for a bad customer experience.

Don’t

  • Hyperlink entire paragraphs of text. Just one or two words are fine.
  • Hyperlink lots of words within a page of text or description. Just one or two should be your limit, as search engines sometimes view excessively hyperlinked content as ‘spammy’.
  • Link to external websites that could negatively affect the reputation of your own EKM online shop.

[/tips]

[more]

[/more]

[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert or the Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]