Let’s start this article on minimalist web design with a quote from the amazing Steve Jobs:
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
If you know anything about Steve Jobs or Apple product design, it’s probably the three-click rule.
During the design of the iPod, Jobs put a problematic task to Apple designers: that the iPod interface is so simply designed he could get to any song on the device in only three clicks.
The three-click rule has a counterpart in minimalist web design with the same general idea.
A visitor to your website should be able to get to anything on your site within three clicks, lest they lose interest in what they were searching for and abandon your site entirely.
But this rule simply doesn’t hold true, according to studies done by Internet researchers.
And what’s more?
Users weren’t even less satisfied, according to consulting firm User Interface Engineering, when they had to click far more than three times (sometimes up to 25 times).
