Impact of number of clicks on user experience

From past to present, UX experts have come up with various theories about this, assuming that the number of clicks has a significant impact on user experience. Some of them:

The fewer clicks required to achieve a user’s goal, the greater the usability. Every page should be accessed with 3 clicks at most. Users who have clicked too much give up their journey. You may frequently encounter a stakeholder claim like “There are too many clicks! User must get there immediately.” or “Let’s do something to decrease the number of clicks.” These demands might make sense at first glance; however, measuring usability with only the number of clicks rule or rigorously sticking to this rule while designing may be quite wrong approach that can lead users to leave your product.

For instance, suppose that a user on a flight purchasing website must navigate a complex and unintuitive way in order to land on the ticket detail page in just 3 clicks. That probably will not reflect a usable and enjoyable experience. The user’s journey to the ticket page should be more discoverable and learnable. In this manner, redesigning with more than a few clicks can provide a more accurate user experience. Since not only do the users establish their connection with the product by evaluating how quickly they got the result, but they also have numerous parameters such as how much research they do, how much time they spend, and how safe they feel when they find the information they’re looking for.

Actually, clicking less does not always mean less time spent, although it seems like there is a direct relationship between the number of clicks and the time spent.

Usability is directly related to how effective and efficient it is to achieve the desired goals, rather than how few clicks it takes.

If a better approach is proposed for the number of clicks, that could be like;

Every decision and action taken by the user in the system, which includes any click, swipe, tap, or some other interaction, should get the user closer to why they are there and keep them away from things out of purpose.

In the words of John Morkes, who is a UX strategist and consultant: “Usability does not equate to a specific number of clicks, taps, swipes, pinches, flicks.”

In the article that Paul Laubheimer wrote for Nielsen Norman Group in 2019, he says that: “While it is important to keep key information easily accessible, the 3-click rule is an arbitrary rule of thumb that is not backed by data, so it’s a myth.”

Let’s take a look at the history of the 3-click rule, which is one of the most rampant theories about the number of clicks.

In 2001, an American entrepreneur and web designer, Jeffery Zeldman’s book “Taking Your Talent to the Web” was the first source to mention the impact of the 3-click approach on user experience(Page: 98). Tough, Zeldman addressed a possibility rather than demonstrating a solid declaration or data based on research, and he stated exactly as follows: “It’s widely agreed, even by people who are not idiots, that web users are driven by a desire for fast gratification. If they can’t find what they’re looking for within three clicks, they might move on to somebody else’s site.”

Right, depending on the action that users would like to take, they may have a low level of attention and patience; they also may quit the system if they are unable to find the data they’re looking for quickly. Nevertheless, it doesn’t always have to be valid; it can differ entirely depending on the user’s motivation and the task they want to do. Indeed, Zeldman had come up with an idea mentioning a possibility; however, research over the years has indicated that clicking less is not as important as consideration in making decisions and staying in the system.

Now let’s go back to 2001, when Zeldman proposed this theory, and look at the website design of Apple that’s one of the biggest companies worldwide.

So we can understand that it is possible to access everything with only 3 clicks. Many other websites were also like this at that time. Reasons for it:

The Internet was not widely accessible; furthermore, fewer and fewer of the world’s population were able to utilize it in comparison to now. Because of some limitations, like bandwidth and architectural languages, designers had to go with minimalism. Users didn’t have too many options to access their destinations. Designing a website was expensive. It was cost-effective for companies to generate simple things that required no complex coding. As a result, the click-number rule that aims to lead users to their goals was trusted. Therefore, the number of clicks became more important than aesthetics in the user experience.

At the present time, hierarchical structures in UX have achieved growth, and there are numerous options to accomplish a goal in an app or website. Consequently, user experiences configured with a paradigm of minimizing the number of clicks might not be efficient. Because this may result in an overabundance of design components on one page, users may need to follow their tracks to remember what and where to choose.

Well then, is the 3-click rule useless anymore?

In fact, if you look at it closely, it’s not quite like that; some cases where it works exist. Although it varies according to the user’s motivation, purpose, and connection established with the system s/he interacts with; the 3-click rule can be useful in some circumstances, such as navigation. Nonetheless, the rule may be implemented in some navigation systems containing too many subcategories. In such cases, it can be necessary to embrace a design approach that prioritizes a broad information architecture (IA) over a deep and sequential one.

Two different navigation systems Both of the above navigation systems have some usability problems on their own.

Become a Medium member For the left — contains navigation structures that have a broad IA with multiple categories:

It may be hard for users to analyze and evaluate. It could happen that more UI areas are required than are necessary. For the right — contains navigation structures that have multiple layers and fewer categories:

Excessive stratification may result in sub-categories with numerous irritating mouse gestures or confusing sequences. Waiting for sub-category pages to open may take too much time. Then, as designers, we look into the system requirements rather than a strategy, like we must design considering the 3-click-rule when enhancing a system. We can sure go with this rule, but if we design a navigation with fewer categories and enough space.

So how do we distinguish them apart, since there are cases where it works?

In truth, it is not accurate to say that the 3-click rule is applied in situations like this. It is an approximation, and the number of click actions is not significant; the context and necessity of it are. In a nutshell,

All approximations regarding how many clicks users need to make would neither exceed a forecast nor work every time. Instead of that, while users accomplish their reason for being in the system, it will be enough to not be demotivated for them, which can only be possible by making a decision in the triangle of the relevant system — user, and work to be done.

In a recent study conducted by the UIE team on this subject;

A test was carried out in which 620 tasks were assigned to 44 users, and their click numbers were analyzed at those moments. During this period, more than 8.000 clicks were captured. The outcomes were quite interesting. The majority of users completed a task until they clicked 25 times. What’s interesting is that there is not a direct correlation between the number of clicks and the number of tasks completed successfully.

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Graph 1 — Graph 2 As shown in Graph-1, there is no relationship between participant satisfaction and the amount of clicks. (The satisfaction rate changes around 46% and 61%.) In Graph — 2, there is the analysis of the relationship between accomplished task rate and click numbers. We can see that 80% of the tasks were performed with 15 clicks.

Another research on this topic,

User tests about the number of clicks in which the book “Prioritizing Usability” written by Jacob Nielsen; demonstrate that reaching the target becomes 600% easier after replacing the other design where the product page is four clicks away from the home page rather than three.

As a result,

According to research, some flows designed to be sticky with the 3-click rule cannot be more useful. Furthermore, heavy content packed on a few screens to make the user click less may cause analysis and perception issues.

As designers, it should be more significant for us to create designs that will comprehend users’ needs and help them achieve their goals than how many times they click. We must also take into account what they want to do, where they come from, where they are now, and where they are headed.

Consequently, the 3-click rule is a problematic method to estimate interaction cost and task efficiency because reading and processing a long list of options as a result of this rule can increase cognitive load. Therefore, rather than focusing on the number of clicks, designers should prioritize;

to make the user’s path through the system obvious and discoverable, to provide information about the step’s before and after circumstances, to give the information they need at the right time, so they can obtain more efficient and productive outcomes in terms of usability principles.

KAYNAKÇA

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/3-click-rule/

https://uxdworld.com/2020/01/28/3-click-rule-and-usability/

http://usabilitytesting.sg/blog/web-usability/new-25-click-rule/

https://qualaroo.com/blog/3-click-rule/

https://www.zeldman.com/talent/Taking_Your_Talent_to_the_Web.pdf