Old ideas for the design community to shed

So today as I was in the elevator heading up to the office, I overheard a conversation about how a product was saved by reducing the number of clicks on the site. This got me thinking about a couple of things….

The number of clicks is not the be-all and end-all to all usability problems. Useless clicks are a symptom of a bigger problem.

Over the years I have heard numerous offerings for usability improvement by reducing the amount of clicks. I was working on a large website when I heard someone from marketing explicitly state that the site needed less clicks. It brought me back to my days in college when the 1 click shopping experience came out, and there was a witch hunt for wasted clicks. So, after thinking a while about it, I feel as if I have distilled what less clicks truly means.
When it comes to clicking around less I feel as if, in most cases, this is because the overall organization of the site is failing or the visual layer of the site is not properly calling out the proper path of the user. I have found that users do not mind clicks that are meaningful and help the accomplish their goals.
So when someone offers a suggestion to lesson the number of clicks, where should the attention be directed? A good start would be at the way that the information on the site is architected. Instead of focusing on clicks, make sure that the correct information for the user goals are being shown in the correct places. Once that is squared away, make sure that the information for the user goals are being represented in the UI in meaningful places.

Re-thinking the “fold” of the page.

How important is it to put information “above the fold”? It is pretty important, and no one should discredit the importance of showing information above the fold. However, no one shoe discredit the importance of showing information below the fold either. I think that a lot of people discredit the importance of information that is below the fold, and as a means of defending the decision, people say “people don’t like scrolling”.
Eye tracking tests are showing that there are hot spots around the scroll bars of the browser, why? because scrolling is a behavior that people are used to when online. So, what does this mean? This means that if information with highest importance or functionality to the user should try to be above the fold. Page organization should flow from the most important information being at the top to the lest important at the bottom. If you can’t fit all of the information above the fold, it’s not going to ruin the site as long as you do it correctly. Give visual indication to the user that the page continues, one can’t depend only on the scroll bar. Allow for partial content to be visible so the user can easily understand that they need to scroll in order to see the rest of the content. Most importantly, knowing what your user is on each page to do greatly helps shed useless information.