The Three Click Rule. Fact or Fiction?

The three click rule states that everything must be within three clicks from the home page. This is simply not the case. It is a myth. Yet web copy form seems to consciously or unconsciously follow this rule time after time.

Even though evidence shows that people will willingly go beyond three clicks if they are confident of their pathway, the three click rule persists. It’s a hold-over from a linear conception of reading and writing.

In fact, if people are moving steadily on a path that is rewarding them with the right information, they aren’t concerned with how many times they click away from the home page. A pathway that lights up for them will keep them on their chosen route.

The number of clicks simply isn’t relevant.

If a certain depth of a site means it’s quicker for users to find what they need, that is the optimal number of levels needed. For the copywriter, this means that parsing information up into more stacked piles of topics makes sense – as long as the pathway keeps rewarding the user along the way.

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