Why you should forget about the number of clicks
Benchmarking is more than some clicks in your app. Some times we are asked this metric to quantify the user experience, and oftentimes, this ask comes from little understanding about the users, what tasks they need to complete, how are they using the product, what are their needs, their goals and the problems they have.
While the number of clicks or taps are a good metric, it is essential to inform the design and product teams about different problem areas, and opportunities, otherwise, the team could overlook other aspects that add up to the interaction cost and the cognitive effort of the experience.
Your one click can destroy your product experience
Here it is an oil diffuser I got in a Christmas swap and a Google Home. They both look similar in design. The diffuser has only two buttons, the Google Home has one button and a touch area. With the diffuser, you can turn it on, turn it off, change the color of the light, set the color to change intermittently, or use no color at all. You can set the mist to every 30 seconds, or leave the mist continuously. 7 actions in only 2 buttons, It should be easy right?
It turns out that the light switch of the diffuser is very confusing, I can never remember how many touches or how many seconds I have to hold the switch for the action I want to achieve, I don’t know if I am doing it right, there is no visibility, no feedback and the only affordance is the switch to turn on and off the device. It seems that the designers of the diffuser were trying to do more with less, however, it costs more to interact with the object than one would expect.
With the Google Home, leaving aside the voice commands options, I receive immediate feedback when adjusting or turning the volume on and off. I don’t need to figure or interpret if I am doing it wrong, I just know as soon as I touch.
While fewer clicks can simplify the experience, designers should be aware of two gulfs to avoid as proposed by Norman (1986): the Gulf of Evaluation and the Gulf of Execution.
Finding a flight from Paris to London with more taps
I used Skyscanner, Kayak, and FlightHub on their mobile version to find flights from Paris to London. A roundtrip from September 7th to September 14th. I used the same criteria for the task on each app: I begin from the Flight search feature, considering a blank slate, and I cleared all previous searches to perform the task without shortcuts. Here are the results:
- Skyscanner: 8 taps, 12 seconds
- Kayak: 9 taps, 20 seconds
- FlightHub: 7 taps, 24 seconds
While I might be biased with my personal opinion, I tried to use Jakob Nielsen’s Heuristics Principles and also some of the eight principles of information architecture to judge the result, and why fewer clicks do not always lead to a positive experience.
FlightHub took fewer clicks and more time, Kayak took more clicks but did a better job in following the aesthetic and minimalist design principle of heuristics. There are fewer units of information competing with the relevant information and the visual elements of the outcome.
I was able to quickly grab the information I needed with Kayak. While it took more time to figure things out with Skyscanner and FlightHub. FlightHub and Kayak were flexible and efficient for me to quickly understand price, departure and arrival times.
Skyscanner shows more options and information on the screen. Judging by heuristics principles, Skyscanner does a better job in ensuring that each tap moves the user towards the end, using overlays to keep the user in context. While Kayak and FlighHub take the entire screen for some interaction patterns during the search.
Skyscanner and FlightHub took essential space of screen: One to give the number of flights per day and the average duration of the flights, and the latter for a persuasive CTA for receiving alerts, while Kayak and Skyscanner do the same using an icon without competing with other information on the screen.
Are more clicks always bad for the User Experience?
While Kayak took more taps, my perception was that Kayak was easier to use and I would probably use it again because:
- Less is more, it keeps my choices to a minimum without having to figure out much
- It shows a preview of information if I wanted to find the cheapest days, and also advise if this is a good time to buy a ticket
- Other potential actions after finding flights, like sorting or filtering are within one tap, vs Skyscanner and FlightHub, at least two taps
Keeping clicks to a minimum is important, more important is to keep users informed about: what is going on, where they are, where they are going and what they need to do.
Below I used Skip The Dishes and Uber Eats to compare how many clicks, and time, it will take to order an Iced Coffee from McDonald’s and removing the item from the cart. I used the same criteria: Search and typing. Same product, same restaurant, same delivery address, no suggested shortcuts.
Task: Search for McDonald’s — add an Iced Coffee and remove it from the cart:
- Uber Eats: 12 taps
- Skip The Dishes: 8 taps
Skip The Dishes did a better job in keeping me in context if I wanted to remove the item. All from the confirmation screen in one tap before checkout. Uber Eats added two more taps during the search, but also two more taps to select the item I wanted to remove, then scroll down to a number selection, and then reduce the quantity to zero. For this particular case, and task, it seems that 12 taps are far more than what Skip The Dishes does, but as a user continues their journey, the experience gets better for Uber Eats.
Imagine you order four items of the same product, and later you want to remove just two of them? With Skip The Dishes you will have to remove all and add the two items again.
Fewer clicks can increase the interaction cost in the rest of the user journey.
So besides clicks, what other metrics should we benchmark?
There is no formula, almost anything can be benchmarked, it is important to partner with your product and design team to understand what are they trying to learn, what they would like to measure, and improve. Are you comparing yourself to a previous version of your app or are you comparing to a competitor? Regardless of the metrics, you decide to collect, you should conduct user research to understand where users have problems with your app or product.
Your one-click experience can turn into a rated “Very Difficult” to use by your users because “it wasn’t clear if I was doing right or wrong although it seemed very fast” or because “it didn’t provide enough feedback while doing the task”
