At Boost we sometimes like to look at other disciplines to draw ideas and lessons for our own field. And as with everything in life, the web experience resembles and is greatly inspired by the reality around us.
Biology, sociology, psychology and… why not? Urban planning too. Yes, in addition to psychological aspects like Behavioural Economics, we can also draw lessons from the organisation of the spaces in our cities. Like cul-de-sacs.
We could say that when we navigate a website or application, we move in the same way as we do in a city. We set out in search of something, we take shortcuts, we repeat paths we already know, and we follow signs. And we also get lost.
Getting lost is precisely what we want to talk about today. Those dead ends that, both in real life and in the digital world, trap us in our experience and prevent us from reaching our destination — or even from completing a purchase we were ready to make.
Urban planning uses this concept to refer to all those paths, roads or routes that lead to a dead end or a place with no exit. Perhaps cul-de-sac is a more technical term, but we all replace it with a much more common one: dead ends. It's easy to understand what we mean when talking about a map, but… what exactly is a cul-de-sac within user experience?
Cul-de-sacs are all those processes or elements of a website that lead nowhere or leave the user without a clear next action to take. We're talking about a point of no return where the experience comes to an abrupt halt and, in most cases, stops completely.
A very simple example would be this very blog. Imagine that, upon finishing this article, you had no option to leave a comment, return to our home page, or contact Boost (our favourite option). You'd find yourself in a dead end, with no way out other than abandoning our website entirely. And nobody wants that.
Although losing a visitor or customer would be the most negative outcome of a cul-de-sac in your experience, the impact of this problem affects several areas. And all of them are negative for your business. Here's the full picture:
Psychological impacts — It makes sense to think that faced with a point of no return, the user ends up experiencing frustration. A feeling that not only creates a poor brand experience but also affects each user's personal perception of themselves, even causing them to question their own abilities.
Impact on key metrics — When the user experience stalls or breaks down, that always shows up in the data. Data as important as your website's conversion or retention rates. Let's break them down:
Bounce rate — This is the BIG casualty of cul-de-sacs. The bounce rate of all the processes and elements of your website with no way out is extremely high and causes many users not to spend even a couple of seconds considering what the next step should be.
Conversion rate — Makes sense, right? If any of the steps in your conversion funnel doesn't work or leads to a dead end, the number of conversions will be directly affected. And this can also impact users who had already made up their mind to buy.
Impact on other marketing aspects — Your user experience should always reflect your brand's values. And what brand would want to be associated with cul-de-sacs that lead nowhere? You said it: none. The reach of these dead ends can extend even to your brand perception and, if you don't take action, to your reputation.
Cul-de-sacs are no joke. Fortunately, solving them is not impossible. It all comes down to a thorough web analysis and actively listening to your users and customers to identify frictions and find solutions. There's always a way out.
Unless you have sufficient time and resources to explore every single navigation flow on your website, the best approach is to stop and analyse the existing behaviour on your website and let your users show you what's failing.
The first thing you need to do is review the data. Numbers never lie and that's why they're at your disposal — to tell you what's going wrong. A tool that can make this analysis easier (among others) is Google Analytics. If you correctly identify the pages with the highest bounce and exit rates, you'll start being able to home in on the dead ends.
It's true that many pages or steps (such as purchase confirmation) naturally have higher abandonment rates, but when those rates spike in the middle of a process or in random interactions, something is probably going on. And it's time to take a close look.
For that close look, the best approach is to understand what the user is experiencing. Some cul-de-sacs are identifiable at a glance, but sometimes you may try to understand why users can't move forward and find no obvious answer. The solution? Heat maps or recorded sessions.
Tools like Hotjar will let you understand how your users interact with that website and, with any luck, identify what makes that step or page a dead end. Remember: your users always have the answer. They're never wrong.
Let's assume you've already found the dead end that's destroying your user experience and directly affecting your business. Although it's tempting to eliminate it at the root straight away, you shouldn't rush. Take the time to think it through and put some of these recommendations into practice:
First, revisit your website architecture and the layout of your information. There may be steps in your navigation flows that make perfect sense for your business but cause the user not to find a way out. Make sure you follow a clear and logical structure so that users always have an obvious option to continue.
Even with a good structure, there may still be points of no return. That's why you should always make sure to offer options and alternatives for your users to escape them. Recommendations, for example, are a good strategy to give your users a quick and relevant way out of cul-de-sacs. Believe us, if it works for Amazon, there's a reason.
Finally, focus on optimising. Small changes on your website can turn a dead end into a smooth journey. Something as simple as modifying a button or changing a text can turn the situation around and save you quite a few abandonments. The priority is to avoid interruptions and unclear actions. You need to make everything easy for the user.
You can always turn around, both on the road and in your web experience design. The important thing is being able to identify the dead ends before they affect your business and redesign them so they become a smooth path for your users.
At Boost we help you map your entire website architecture, analyse and identify the pages and processes where your users unexpectedly drop off, and redesign the cul-de-sacs by finding an easy and obvious way out. So we'll leave our contact form right here for you, so we can get to work (and so this article doesn't become a cul-de-sac with no way out).
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