The degree to which labels, links, or cues signal to users that relevant content lies ahead. Users follow strong scent — links and labels that clearly suggest the content behind them — and abandon paths with weak or misleading cues.
Common contexts
- Rewriting vague navigation labels after click-through analytics show users bypassing a high-value section
- Testing category page headings in a tree test to see if participants can predict what lives underneath
- Strengthening link text on a help centre homepage where users repeatedly land on the wrong article
Use when
Audit scent whenever analytics show a high-traffic page with unexpectedly low click-through — the bottleneck is often label clarity, not the content itself.
Avoid when
Don't optimize scent for one user segment at the expense of others — labels that are perfectly descriptive for expert users often mislead beginners who don't recognize the terminology.
Weak information scent is almost always a writing problem, not a structure problem — renaming three navigation labels can outperform a full IA restructure.
Real-world examples
- Google appends a snippet and URL beneath each search result so users can judge relevance before clicking; studies show users spend 80% of their pre-click time evaluating this scent.
- Amazon's breadcrumb trail (Electronics > Cameras > DSLRs > Canon) provides strong information scent that reduces search refinement and keeps users in their browsing funnel.
- Nielsen Norman Group found that link labels like 'click here' cause 50% more back-button clicks than descriptive labels like 'view our return policy', due to weak scent.