Demystifying UX Design: Common False Beliefs and Their Remedies: Part 1

When to Avoid Creating Long Pages

As I mentioned earlier, the keys to the successful design of long pages are making users believe that there is more content below the fold and presenting content of a similar nature when a user scrolls down.

However, what if a Web page would consist of various blocks of content that are very different from one another? In this case, avoid creating long pages, because users would not expect to see more content below the fold. For example, when viewing the page shown in Figure 1, users would not expect to discover interesting content below the fold; therefore, this long page is not effective.

On this page, the content below the fold does not appear to be a natural extension of the content above the fold. The page’s visual design presents quite a few blocks of content that are laid out one on top of another. This layout implies that there is nothing below the fold. Since users would not expect to see more content at the bottom of the page, they would be unlikely to scroll down and would ignore the content below the fold.

In this case, the solution to the problem would be either to create a short page on which all of the essential content is above the fold or to completely redesign the visual presentation and layout of the content to encourage users to scroll down.

There’s No Need to Worry About the Number of Clicks

Many designers are unnecessarily concerned about the number of clicks it takes for a user to get to the information he needs. I’ve even seen teams use the number of clicks as a measure of usability—assuming the more clicks, the worse the usability. Well, that’s not necessarily the case. It all depends on the context in which the clicks occur.

To determine an acceptable number of clicks, you should consider two things: the number of clicks and the mental effort each click involves. If a user must click many times, but each click involves little effort, the design is actually very easy to use. For example, this is the case with a wizard, in which a user need only click Next a few times, then click Submit. However, if there were just a few clicks, but each click required a lot of deliberation and decision making, this would likely result in high bounce rate, because it violates the principle: Don’t make me think, just get me to act. Between these two alternatives, the first would typically lead to better task-completion rates and shorter task-completion times, despite there being more clicks.

For example, in a typical software installation workflow, a user needs only to click a series of Yes buttons to complete the task. But the worst thing that can happen in such a case is for users to get stuck on one of the steps. So, if getting through a single step would require a lot of thinking, you should break it down into a number of easy steps.

Try not to over think your design, consolidating a complex process into too few clicks. While doing so might seem to create a simpler workflow when you judge it only by the number of clicks, it would be harder for users to complete the task because of the amount of deliberation that each click would require.

Of course, as in everything you do in user-interface design, you should also take into consideration the type of product you’re designing and its context of use. For example, if you were designing a user interface for a GPS (Global Positioning System), you should minimize both the number of clicks and the mental effort each click requires, because failing to do so would severely undermine driving safety. I’ve seen GPSs that required too many clicks—for example, clicking OK and Continue. While extra clicks might not matter when someone is using a computer, they become a safety hazard when a person is driving.

In Part 2 and Part 3 of this series, I’ll explore some other UX design myths.