A not so sound unsub…

Although I love SoundCloud, I was receiving too many emails. So I looked to unsubscribe. As per conventions, I immediately scrolled straight to the bottom of the email to find the hyperlink. Looking around the footer, I couldn’t see anything that stood out! Finally, I noticed hidden in the plain, black text was a tiny link. This was not highlighted or underlined. It didn’t even show any affordance when hovered over!

Key Heuristics to remember…

“Software should be forthcoming” - Alan Cooper

“Don’t waste my time” - Steve Krug

Solution…

This is an easy one. How about at the very least, clearly signposting this hyperlink as mentioned above - I would make the ‘unsubscribe’ text a more noticeable colour, add text underlining and I would make this stand out even more in hover state - perhaps changing the colour again or making it appear bold… you know what, why not both? Users should not be forced to hunt for a hidden ‘unsubscribe’ button… this is borderline ‘dark UX’ and could potentially turn users of SoundCloud completely.