The three-click rule orig­i­nal­ly referred to site nav­i­ga­tion, stat­ing that a user should be able to access any infor­ma­tion with­in three clicks. It is derived from the mis­tak­en belief that users will become frus­trat­ed and aban­don their task if they can­not find what they are look­ing for with­in three clicks. A com­mon result is a very wide, but shal­low nav­i­ga­tion struc­ture and/or cat­e­go­riza­tion and group­ing schemes that don’t make much sense to the users.

Perception Of Progress

Rather than arti­fi­cial­ly forc­ing every task to fit with­in three clicks, focus instead on mak­ing sure the task flow is clear­ly under­stand­able and that each click results in obvi­ous progress toward the user’s desired out­come.

For the most part, as long as users feel con­fi­dent that each click leads them down the right path, they will endure far more than three clicks.

For instance, the aver­age check­out process is rarely done in just three clicks; yet, users seem to suc­ceed quite well with the five to sev­en clicks in a typ­i­cal check­out task sequence:

1. View Cart
2. Go to Check­out
3. Enter Ship to Info
4. Select Ship­ping method
5. Cred­it Card info
6. Review Order
7. Get Con­fir­ma­tion

Of course, sep­a­rat­ing the task into too many clicks can have an adverse effect on the users, as well. Break­ing up a typ­i­cal check­out sequence so that each ele­ment of a cred­it card and billing address is on a sep­a­rate page would sure­ly frus­trate any user.

Task Analysis Is Key

The point is that the num­ber of clicks is a poor design met­ric. The more suc­cess­ful design­ers con­duct a thor­ough task analy­sis and opti­mize the task sequence to man­age the per­cep­tion of progress rather then the num­ber of clicks.

More­over, the task sequence should be based on the users’ per­cep­tion of the task, not the developer’s sense of what is tech­ni­cal­ly effi­cient.

For instance, while it is more effi­cient to cre­ate one long check­out page, usabil­i­ty test­ing has shown that users don’t per­form well with that approach.

The design­er needs to ful­ly under­stand how users orga­nize or group the var­i­ous steps of a task flow and design to that flow.

Easy To Use Is Hard To Design

The three-click rule is just anoth­er one of those com­mon false met­rics that lazy design­ers fol­low with­out due dili­gence. Task analy­sis is hard­er to do but pro­vides a much more suc­cess­ful result, and, in the end, isn’t that what you want?

As we say in the UX design busi­ness, if it’s easy to design, it’s hard to use. If it’s easy to use, it’s hard to design.

Does your design live by the three-click rule? Why or why not?