3-Click Rule or Three Click Rule is a general User Interface design guideline that states it shouldn’t take more than 3 clicks for the user to get to relevant content or actions. The guideline goes as far as saying that users will get frustrated and abandon the website if they can’t find what they are looking for in 3 clicks.

Three Click Rule was suggested by Jeffrey Zeldman in 2001:

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.

Jeffrey Zeldman in Taking Your Talent to the Web

The idea of three clicks makes sense, but it seems like number 3 was drawn out of the hat. Zeldman says that the rule is simply a suggestion based on the way people use the web.

He might have good reasons for stating that, however there are no known studies that confirm that conclusion. But there are tests that found no correlation between number of clicks and completion of tasks, thus disapproving the 3-Click Rule.

In our studies, users complain about how long it takes to find things all the time. This is one way that users vocalize their frustration. They tell us that if they could only reduce the number of frustrating clicks the site would be better.

However, these complaints aren’t actually about the clicks. They are really complaints about failing to find something. When users find what they want they don’t complain about number of clicks.

Joshua Porter (Testing the Three-Click Rule)

So even though it is really not about clicks, Three Click Rule can still be considered a useful guideline to serve as a reminder to designers to reduce complexity, and keep things simple, and intuitive for the users.

Photo by Emmanuel