Dead as a Click. ☠️

Spare your UX a funeral.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ Hey Folks! I wanted to start today's Rant with a little visual anecdote: Me: chat GPT will never replace search engines. Also me: [Image] Why is everyone so crazy about chat GPT? Because it gives you answers, rather than search results. And it's so beautifully simple. Now, I know a lot of techie folks take pride in mastering arcane tools... The less intuitive the better. Bring on that ugly interface! It’s a point of pride and they never question it. I never questioned it (at least publicly) for fear of sounding…too blond. “Heck yeah I love the 1000 clicks it takes me in Google Analytics to access a single report, look how muscular my index finger has become. And building GDS dashboards that break if you put one comma wrong is just delightful!” (Well, nope.) Plus, after all, you don’t question God…I mean, Google. But while you’re carrying those 1000s of unnecessary clicks as a badge of honour, you could be spending this time on something that is *actually* productive. Tech Giants are often too big to care about user experience. You might not be. So here are some NEW ideas to improve your UX:  1. Track your [dead clicks]( with session recordings [Image] Today a dead click, tomorrow a dead user. Proverbially, of course. The little sister of the rage click (when your user hammers away in rage at an element of your interface that is either not responding, or was designed not to be clicked on but looks like it is clickable - e.g. buttons are made for clicking, just like shoes are made for walking, not putting on top of your head.) Dead clicks point to a whole lot of UX, UI and engineering issues, that can ultimately lead to churn, so that's why it's important to track them: Frontend-side causes of dead clicks: - Blocks and clashes. A specific element on a page blocks another interactive element (meaning user clicks can never hit their intended target) [Image] - Misleading design. Users understand typical design conventions: a button should look like a button. If something looks interactive, it’s very hard to stop people from clicking on it (even if it’s not actually a link). It's more common than it seems. Hey I even found one "dead button" in Userpilot (🤞keep your fingers crossed our Head of Product doesn't kill me like an underused feature):[Image] - Broken links. A link could simply be missing or broken – it’ll mean that element will never direct your users to their intended destination. - Missing links. Users might expect a text string to link them elsewhere – think carefully about which textual elements of your website should be dynamic. Server-side causes of dead clicks:  - Poor code quality. Poorly coded HTML or JavaScript could mean an element fails to respond when a user clicks on it. - Broken elements. An incorrect URL or broken link that leads precisely nowhere is a common cause of dead clicks. - Poor performance. If you don’t focus on ensuring your website is robust, secure, and stable, it could mean a slow-loading page that takes far too long to respond to users’ clicks. - Unresponsive server. If your application fails to process a request, your user might repeatedly click with no effect.  What's the best way of tracking and addressing dead clicks? 👉 Dead clicks, unlike rage clicks, are a bit elusive. It's not easy to detect them as they don't generate unusual spikes in user activity like rage clicks (which you could detect with click tracking). Instead, use user session recording tools to find them. 2. Marie Kondo features that don't spark joy with [feature audit]( [Image]( Is your product-lean & clean, or is it bloated with features nobody's using like all of us now after Christmas? As Andrew Chen of Andreessen Horowitz said “The natural state of any new product is that no one’s using it :)” Well, this applies also to new features. And companies that fail to implement [continuous onboarding]( for their new features typically see a [feature death cycle:Â]( [Image] Product Feature Death Cycle – Reforge in [What is First Time UX (FTUX)]( 👉 btw. if you want to learn more about user onboarding - register for our upcoming[ User Onboarding Best Practices for SaaS webinar here.]( [Image]( How to detect underused features you should probably sunset? 🌆 - Feature audit is a tool that PMs can use to evaluate how good features are at satisfying user needs. - A typical feature audit is a graph with data about how many users engage with all the features and how often they do it. - Product audits help teams identify the [killer featuresÂ](and those which don’t bring enough value. Such insights can help them avoid [feature bloat](. - To make feature audits, collect data on how many times each feature is used, the percentage of users that interact with it, and how often. If you're the lucky owner of a Userpilot account (no? [Get one for free here](), you can easily spot underused features in [Userpilot's Features & Events report]( and on the feature usage heatmap - it's the best way tag & track your features without any coding: [Image] [Image] What to do after a feature audit? Well, it might be time to say goodbye & kill your darlings. I'm gonna let a professional feature hitman from Adobe, Vazgen Babayan, do the talking - watch [this interview we did last year on killing underused features.Â]( + As a rule of thumb: more white space is almost* always better (*well, not in [empty states in the new user's first run experience](, but that's a whole new story.) Read more about it from the design perspective on[refactoringui.comÂ]( [Image]  3. Conduct [Digital Experience AnalyticsÂ]( - [Digital customer experience]( is the digital touchpoints that your customers engage with when interacting with your business. - Digital [analytics]( measures and tracks the experience that customers have on every digital channel. It includes both web analytics and product analytics. - Digital experience analytics is beneficial because it helps you make data-driven decisions, identify friction points in customer journeys, and improve retention and loyalty. - The first step to tracking digital experience analytics is to create journey maps. User journey mapping involves identifying the milestones in the user journey so that you can set and track goals easily. - Another way to track digital analytics is to tag UI elements and track how users engage with them. This helps to identify bugs or other usability issues. - Analytics tools, like [heatmaps]( and session replays, help you visualize on-page behavior, giving you relevant data on the user experience. - [NPS surveys]( are also an excellent tool to collect customer feedback and give your digital teams more data on the customer experience. [Image] I gave you a lot of food for thought today, hopefully - let me know if you have any questions! If you liked this email (and hey, if you got this far - you probably did! 😁) grab our book that *consists* of these rants organized into neat chapters by the different metrics us-product-folks are typically looking to improve - with exercises! [Image]( Grab your free e-book copy[here!]( See you all next week! [Image] Emilia Korczynska, Head of Marketing at Userpilot I'm a marketing manager obsessed with product growth. Wanna talk? Simply respond to this email!  To make sure you keep getting these emails, please add emilia@userpilot.co to your address book or whitelist us. Want out of the loop? Don't remember you subscribed at all? We get it. We sometimes don't remember how we got to our office today let alone how we subscribed to this or that email. Sometimes people also get offended by our strong opinions on all matters product, SaaS and UX, but you know what? We won't stop sharing them - and what we believe is the best product practices and the future of SaaS. Anyway, if you ever want to come back you'll know where to find us. Until then! [Unsubscribe](. Our postal address: 1887 Whitney Mesa Dr #9995 Henderson, Nevada 89014 United States