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"We have one million links on our homepage so that people can reach
the content with as few clicks as possible." Have you heard that
one before? I myself used to believe in that outdated rule of thumb, and
have therefore made myself guilty of overloading some home pages over
the years.
In fact, what matters most is a clear site structure-clear enough so
that people can easily understand where to look. It is better to have
users make a couple of extra clicks than to have them pulling their hair
out because the item they want is hidden among a million other links.
This is a good example of how a rule of thumb can spread and be respected
for many years without anyone knowing if it is correct. I long ago lost
count of the number of individuals who have told me that there should
be no more than three clicks to the content.
Of course, people should be able to find what they want quickly, without
having to click and wait more than necessary. But when your design is
guided by this principle, you forget that search time is not the only
thing that matters. Equally important is what is going on during the search.
To search among unclear link descriptions, feeling uncertain and choosing
a link without knowing where it leads, is much more frustrating for a
surfer than clicking through several logical steps and waiting for the
pages to download.
This is not just my opinion, but also the result of a study that tested
some rules of thumb. It showed that finding information did not become
more difficult with more clicks-as long as people could follow a clear
path to the goal. The study was conducted by Jonas Ödman as an examination
work at The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.
I recommend the newsletter published
by Human Factors International for anyone who wants old "truths"
questioned. It is the best place, after Jakob
Nielsen's web site, to keep informed about user interface in the area
of Web-design. In some respects Human Factors is better.
The fact is, those interested in user interface tend to chew on the same
idea year after year without moving on and coming up with something new.
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