Number of Clicks: An Oversimplified Proxy for Usability
“I don’t care if you’ve “been in this field for 20 years”—don’t rely on assumptions. Unless you’ve got proper data, what you think the user typically does and what they actually do are probably different.”
It’s not uncommon for non-designers to refer to “number of clicks” as a measure of usability. In fact, it’s a bit of a proxy for actual usability—in the same way that “hours worked” is a proxy for employee effectiveness at companies that haven’t figured out how to measure the achievement of actual business goals. We should be more concerned with whether the user can complete their goals (and have a great experience doing so) than with the number of clicks it takes to get from point A to point B.
Those of us who have been working in web and interface design for several years are probably aware of the three-click rule, or at least the commonly held idea that tasks with fewer clicks fare better in terms of usability. This is a rule that was established around the time of the millennium, when websites were generally simpler and slower, and clicking 10 times was a lot more painful than it is today.
Number of clicks as a measure of usability has since been challenged by Joshua Porter’s study of 44 users, which revealed that hardly anyone gave up after only three clicks. Usability expert David Hammil argues that we should stop using this metric as a measure of usability altogether because it encourages bad practices that detract from usability, like shoving every feature onto a page to prevent a user from having to click multiple times to get anywhere.
Having introduced UX Design to a number of product development teams with no prior experience with the practice, this is one of the biggest mental hurdles I typically work with them to overcome. Teams with legacy products that have been built without the involvement of a designer often have jam-packed interfaces due to the team’s belief that a user needs to see all their options at once, and that every feature should be one or two clicks away. This is detrimental to the user as it increases cognitive load, causing them to spend more energy locating what they need in a sea of information, and a number of our usability tests have shown users struggling to find what they need in mile-long menus.
Not only are information-heavy interfaces difficult to use, they’re challenging to optimize for mobile devices, as mobile design requires strategic decision-making regarding which features to surface on screens with limited real estate. Also, they’re just plain ugly—and we know that aesthetic appeal creates the impression of quality regardless of the true performance of the product.
Here are some smarter ways to help users easily find what they need without overwhelming the interface:
Use data to uncover users’ most common tasks - This is one of the most powerful uses for analytics tools like Google Analytics or Pendo. If you know which pages and features are getting the most usage, you can highlight those as main navigation items, and de-prioritize the features that don’t get as much activity. I don’t care if you’ve “been in this field for 20 years”—don’t rely on assumptions. Unless you’ve got proper data, what you think the user typically does and what they actually do are probably different.
Conduct card-sorting exercises - Card-sorting, whether open (where the participant defines their categories) or closed (where the participant is provided with categories), allows users to organize information they’d find on your site into categories, in a way that makes sense to them. This is a great exercise to do when you’re designing site navigation, as it leads you to an IA that is intuitive for your users. You’ll be able to determine how information on your site should be categorized, so even if certain information is a few clicks away, users will know where to find it.
Rely on progressive disclosure - When using progressive disclosure, you only show the user what they need to complete that particular task at that point in time. It may require a few more clicks to access certain workflows, but as they are performing their tasks, users won’t be distracted by a bunch of irrelevant information that would slow down their decision-making. If you’ve used Turbotax recently, you’ve seen how Intuit makes taxes less complicated with their smart use of progressive disclosure.
Conduct user testing - Once you’ve arrived at a clean, minimalist layout that you think users will have an easy time navigating, test your hypothesis through user testing. Watch users navigate your site and see if they can in fact find the information they need with ease. It’s not so much about the number of clicks as it is about their ability to locate information on their own without getting confused, frustrated, or having to be redirected.
The three-click rule as a well-intentioned but outdated concept. It may take a little extra planning from UX Designers, but let’s elevate our thinking beyond counting clicks to creating pared-down, focused workflows that are stupid-simple to use. Figure out what the user wants to do and help them get there with an interface that stays out of their way.
Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash