Now I’m not gonna lie to you: your site visitors aren’t going to leave your site after three clicks.
We’re talking about a magic number of clicks before ‘user fatigue’ starts to set in.
User fatigue?
Yes. Site visitors are that impatient. If they don’t quickly and easily find what they’re looking for they will click away from your site.
So the goal when organizing your site – during the site map phase – is to make the maximum amount of information available in the minimum amount of clicks.
Bonus Rule Bender
While the Rule of Three Clicks is simple, here’s the twist: to have a good hunt, you must create tempting content!
Why the twist?
It’s OK to have users click more than three times as long as your content takes them on a journey. As they hunt for information, they will follow content scented with confidence, the right word, or a great image.
And that means a website must make users feel like they’re the center attention.
Don’t worry about a shark not biting – he’ll bite if the bait has his name written all over it.
It’s a bit like setting a trap for a hungry shark: bait him, feed him to your final goal and he will follow you without even realizing it.
So focus on two things:
- a slim, shallow site map where users don’t have to guess at what a page is about
- tempting content sprinkled along the path to where you and your users meet
That’s it. Focusing on a short path to tantalizing content is the secret to the Rule of Three Clicks (plus a Bonus Rule Bender).
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robbie Moore is the founder of Rushminute, a digital marketing agency in Lincoln, Nebraska. With 20+ years of experience in digital marketing, Robbie has worked with dozens of companies and organizations, large and small, around the globe. He also writes extensively about design, development, and business in general.
