Have you ever been on a site and found something that didn’t work? Maybe it was a link that you clicked on, and there was no response. How did that make you feel? If you felt frustrated and clicked the link fast, over and over, out of frustration, you’ve personally experienced rage clicks.
Website problems can be extremely frustrating for site visitors and users. They don’t have time to waste on broken links or other issues. When something doesn’t work as expected, they may rage click and leave the site out of frustration.
In this article, we discuss rage clicks, what they are, what you can learn about site visitor behaviour, and how to conduct a rage-click analysis on your website.
What are Rage Clicks?
Rage clicks happen when users repeatedly click on a certain area or on a specific element of a website. They may click very fast over a short amount of time, and they do this out of frustration. Rage clicks are a good indication that users are frustrated due to poor page speed, confusion, broken elements, and more.
While rage clicks are frustrating, they can provide valuable insights for businesses to make a data-driven decision to improve their web designs. Here are some other examples of what may cause rage clicks:
Misleading Button
Some spots on a website may look like a button to site visitors. The reason could be the colour, size, or shape of the image or text. When a site user clicks on the “button,” they expect a certain action to take place. When that doesn’t happen, they become frustrated.
Dead Links
Links are another issue that can cause rage clicks. When a site visitor clicks on a link, they expect to be taken to a new webpage. When that doesn’t happen, they can become frustrated.
The issue may be caused by broken elements, underlined text that wasn’t connected with a link, and more.
Slow-Loading Links
Another problem that causes rage clicks is slow-loading links. Visitors may become frustrated when the link opens slowly and rapidly click on it, hoping to hurry the page loading process.
The Desired Path
Here, the issue is a path that a user may want to take but they can’t. If you find a particular spot on a webpage with a high number of rage clicks, this could show that this is the most intuitive path for site users.
Rage clicks show where users become stuck and frustrated. Making adjustments at these specific spots can make the site user’s journey on the website easier and more enjoyable. This is why it’s essential to conduct rage click analysis.
How to Detect Rage Clicks
There are a couple of methods you can use to conduct rage click analysis, depending on what you want to figure out.
What People Do: Use an Analytics Tool
If you’d like to see where and how often people rage click on a webpage, it’s best to use an analytics tool such as Microsoft Clarity. Microsoft Clarity is a free tool that’s easy to use, and helps you learn more about user behaviour. This analytics tool offers session replays, insights on rage clicks, and heat maps.
Using an analytics tool for click analysis is one of the easiest and fastest ways to find usability issues on a website.
Why People Do What They Do: Usability Testing
Usability testing is the best option for anyone who wants to gain deep insights and understanding into their users’ click habits. During a usability test, a UX researcher watches people as they use your website in real-time.
This testing method allows researchers to analyse user behaviour by asking questions and listening to what a user says as they interact with the site or app. You learn where and why people track clicks on your site.
What Constitutes Rage Clicking?
Before doing any type of rage click analysis, it’s important to understand what indicates a rage click. Here are some indicators that users are frustrated on a webpage:
- They make at least three clicks in a row in one place
- The three clicks are made within a two-second time period
- All clicks take place within a 100-pixel radius
How to Fix Rage Clicks
Fixing rage clicks is essential to your website. If the issues are not corrected, visitors and site users will leave out of sheer frustration, with many not returning. The result is a high bounce rate, lower ranking in the search engines, and less business. Fixing rage clicks is crucial to your business.
The best way to take care of rage click issues is to fix them after your rage click analysis. If rage clicks are happening on a non-clickable element, your design must be adjusted so it doesn’t appear clickable. For instance, information that’s underlined in a different colour from other text on the page or text that has a box around it can look clickable, even when it’s not.
The underlined words may look like a link, while the text in a box resembles a clickable button. The way to fix these problems is to make them look more like plain text. Doing this will keep site users from becoming frustrated.
Slow load times can also cause rage clicks, so it’s necessary to make adjustments to improve site performance. Some of the most common issues for links that load slowly include:
- Poor server performance
- Heavy traffic
- Too much flash content
- Increased HTTP requests
- Code density
- Too many ads
- And more
These are a couple of examples of rage click issues and how to fix them. The key takeaway is that once rage click issues have been fixed, you’ll find users are no longer frustrated. They’ll spend more time on your site resulting in a lower bounce rate and higher conversion rate.
Summing It Up
Analysing user behaviour is the best way to learn what’s working or not for site users. While it’s frustrating to learn users are frustrated using your site, it’s also a great opportunity to find ways to improve your website.
Rage click analysis provides you with the information necessary to improve specific elements on the site. With the data from the analysis, you can improve the site’s functionality, increase conversions, and improve the site’s user experience.
