4 tips for evaluating expert opinions
by Jamie Kiley

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Last week, a subscriber emailed me about a usability study relating to the "Three-Click Rule." If you're not familiar with the rule, it essentially says that visitors should be able to find what they're looking for within three clicks. The implied consequence of disobedience is that you'll lose your visitors.

This study, however, took exception to the rule, saying it's not necessarily true. In this particular usability test, hardly any of the participants gave up after three clicks. The participants were more concerned about being successful eventually than about how many clicks it took to get there.

Which leads to a difficult question: How is a site owner to know what rules to obey and which advice to listen to? When the experts differ with each other, and opinions contradict usability studies, how do you know what's really true? And more importantly, how do you know what will make your site successful?

It's a tough question. After all, there are dozens of rules which sound very logical, but there are also dozens of experts who disagree with the rules.

Although there's no easy way to define what approach should be taken in any given situation, there are ways to evaluate the rules and the experts' opinions. By answering some key questions about any rule or expert opinion, you can figure out what approach will work best for your site. Here are four tips on how to do that:

1. Recognize that every rule has exceptions. Although rules are based on principles, they are specific applications of the principles for specific circumstances. When the circumstances change, the principles remain the same, but the applications will be different.

2. Understand the context. You have to know where rules come from and why experts give the opinions they give. In the case of the study on the three clicks rule, it's crucial to know why the rule didn't seem to apply.

In this instance, the study was a usability study. Unfortunately, tests conducted in a lab setting don't necessarily reflect the way things happen in the real world. These studies are valuable, but users might behave differently during the study (where the environment is not their normal environment) than in real life. Take the context into consideration when evaluating the results.

3. Learn the principle behind the rule. For example, most of us are familiar with the "short copy is best" rule. The principle behind that is that visitors have short attention spans and therefore will not wade through long copy.

However, it's been proven numerous times that long copy often produces far better results than shorter copy. Does this mean the principle suddenly isn't true anymore?

Nope.

The reason long copy works in certain instances is that it applies the principle (which is to not bore visitors), even though it breaks the short copy rule. If long copy is gripping, enticing, persuasive, and gives a visitor the exact information they were looking for, then short attention spans won't be a problem. The copy will work.

4. Define specifically why you want to break the rule. If you want to go against the norm, you should have a good reason for doing so. In fact, you should ensure that breaking the rule will allow you to better comply with the principle behind the rule--even if it means breaking the rule itself.

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