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Dead clicks (DC)

What dead clicks are, how they’re measured, and why they point to UX or design confusion.

Vasil Dachev avatar
Written by Vasil Dachev
Updated this week

Engagement metrics help you understand how visitors interact with your site beyond just loading it. These signals reveal how effectively your content captures attention, encourages interaction, and keep users involved.

What are dead clicks?

Dead clicks are clicks on page elements that don’t trigger any action or feedback - like text, images, or icons that look interactive but aren’t. They often reflect confusion or unmet expectations, where users think something should work but nothing happens.

How is it measured?

We monitor all click events and flag those that occur on non-interactive elements - where there’s no corresponding response, navigation, or on-page feedback. These are averaged per pageview to show how often users click without results. Common culprits include misaligned CTAs, decorative icons, or elements that fail to load due to performance issues.

Why it matters?

A high number of dead clicks often reveals usability problems - like unclear affordances, misleading layouts, or broken elements. It may also suggest performance delays, where users click too early before the page fully loads. Reducing dead clicks helps create more intuitive, responsive experiences where users clearly understand what’s clickable - and what isn’t.

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