Fewer clicks may not be a good proxy for improving digital customer experiences (cx).
I get why it’s appealing to index on fewer clicks. It’s easy to measure and, because we can design digital products to reduce the number of clicks required to do something, we can demonstrate measurable impact.
“We tested two designs, and customers completed their task(s) in fewer clicks with the second one. So, let’s move ahead with the second one.”
“Hooray! We made it better!”
Yes to the first point, and no to the second! Designing an experience with fewer clicks just changes the number of clicks. Maybe that improves the experience. Maybe not.
An example: If I’m carrying out a financial transaction — sending money to someone, moving money between accounts, or withdrawing funds from an account — one way it might play out is that I allocate the money I want to move (click) and then execute the transaction (click).
But I’m flawed, and so there’s risk of negative outcomes: I input the wrong value and don’t notice or that I simply haven’t given the transaction as much thought as I ought to give it. I often think and re-think before carrying out transactions — even ones that I am almost certainly going to carry out.
To protect against those outcomes, I add some friction: allocate the money I want to move (click), confirm the details of the transaction (are you sure? click), and then execute it (click).
The extra click creates conditions for me to reflect and make sure all the details are accurate, and that’s valuable. Even if I confirm the details I still have a moment to pause and think before the final click! Friction, yes, but think of it as good friction, cousin to good stress aka eustress, which can be beneficial for human wellbeing (Psychology Today, 2024).
To be clear, I’m not saying that fewer clicks is bad or wrong. I’m saying that it isn’t always right, which is why I support an alternative framing: optimal clicks.
Pivoting from fewer clicks to the optimal number allows for scenarios where fewer is better but embraces that fact that the same number of clicks — and perhaps in some cases more clicks — is actually the best path forward.
Optimal numbers [of anything] index on judgment, which is another reason why I like this framing. Fewer is clear. Optimal is murky. How do you determine an optimal number of clicks, categories, levels of hierarchy, colors, color combinations, pillars, priorities, initiatives, and so on?
You need to analyze, discuss, relate to, build, connect, research, and interpret to solve for the optimal number [and that should absolutely involve talking to real live human customers, observing them, testing design variants with different numbers of clicks, and measuring participant satisfaction w/different variants so as to examine possible relationships between click numbers and satisfaction and/or other tbd constructs…].
And for all of that, you need judgment. Not just judgment but good judgment, another cousin in the ‘good’ family tree albeit a bit of an outcast since judgment doesn’t have the same immediate-negative connotations as friction and stress.
Here’s the upshot: optimization is the result of good judgment, and good judgment involves asking whether the proxy metrics we use to evaluate design changes, cx improvements, or strategic directions — let alone the ones we use to measure success — are the right ones.
jordan beck, phd 