Dead clicks on Shopify: clicks on things that are not links

A dead click on a Shopify store is a click on part of a section that is not a link, button or other control: an image with no link, a badge, a heading. Store Decode counts dead clicks for each section of your homepage, on phones and computers apart. It shows them on the page map and in the sections table of Explore, without recording anyone’s screen.

Type it in Find

• Homepage sections with dead clicks
• Where do visitors click and nothing happens?
• Which sections have the most dead clicks?

Type it in Find on Home or Explore and Store Decode opens the view with your numbers.

Store Decode Desktop · 7 days

97 dead clicks

On an image in Why Tidewell that isn’t a link.

Sample store · 1,900 sessions

Sample store · Desktop · 7 days · 1,900 sessions

Where to find it

1. Open Explore and pick Homepage.
2. Choose Mobile or Desktop in the card header.
3. Under “Colour the page by”, choose Dead clicks. Sections with more dead clicks turn a deeper red.
4. Select a section to read its count in the panel beside the map.
5. Set the detail level to Full detail to add the Dead clicks column to the sections table, then sort by it.

Two other places point you to the same sections. The Dead clicks signal marks a section’s row and its block on the map. And when one element in a section collects many dead clicks, an observation card names it on Home and on the Observations page. On Home the card carries an Open in theme editor link.

What the numbers mean

What counts as a control

A click is dead when it lands on nothing interactive inside its section. Store Decode treats these as interactive: links with an address, buttons, elements with a button role, form fields, accordion summaries and labels. Elements given a click handler or a tab stop in the markup itself count too. A click anywhere else in the section is a dead click.

Dead clicks are counted inside clicks. A section’s clicks per 100 views, its clicks for every 100 sessions that viewed it, include them. Dead clicks themselves are shown as a count, never as a rate, and every repeat counts: a visitor who clicks the same image three times adds three.

What a dead click cannot tell you

Store Decode does not check what happened after the click. Some themes open a pop-up or a zoom from a script on an element that is not a control in the markup. Those clicks still count as dead, even though something opened. The count tells you where to look; the page itself tells you what visitors met there.

The signal and the card

A section gets the Dead clicks signal at 50 or more dead clicks, once 300 sessions have had the section on the page.

The observation card looks at one element, not the whole section. It reads the last 7 days with all devices counted together. It appears when one element in a section has dead clicks equal to at least 2% of the sessions that viewed the section, and at least 30 of them. The card names the element in plain words from its tag: the image, the heading, the text, or “that element”. It never prints your theme’s class names.

Example: clicks on trust badges

Tidewell Home is an invented sample store, and every number here is made up. Its Why Tidewell section is an image with text and a row of trust badges. Nothing in it is a link, button or form field.

Sample store, Why Tidewell	Dead clicks	Clicks	Clicks per 100 views	Sessions that viewed it	Orders after a click
Mobile · 7 days · n=4,100	231	231	19.4	1,189 of 4,100	0
Desktop · 7 days · n=1,900	97	97	10.6	912 of 1,900	0

Every click in the section was a dead click, because nothing in it is a control. On phones that is 231 clicks from 1,189 sessions that viewed it, and the section carries the Dead clicks signal on both devices.

The sample’s card is drawn from its mobile week (Mobile · 7 days · n=4,100; the app counts all devices). It reads “People clicked the image in Why Tidewell 231 times; it is not a link, button or other control.”

You could

You could: make the image in Why Tidewell a link, then compare its dead clicks for the week after against the week before.

Open the section in the theme editor first, to see what the badges are on the page.

If the badges should not invite a click at all, there is a second option. You could: make them look less like buttons, then compare the section’s dead clicks on the same device for the week after.

Either way, look at clicks per 100 views beside the dead clicks. Fewer dead clicks with the same clicks per 100 views is what you would see if the same clicks now land on a control. Marking the card done on the Observations page starts a before and after report at 7 and 14 days. That report counts all devices and never compares dead clicks, so compare those yourself in Explore.

Common questions

What are dead clicks on a Shopify store?

Clicks on parts of the page that are not links, buttons or other controls. Visitors make them when something looks clickable: a product photo without a link, a badge, a styled heading. Store Decode counts them section by section on your homepage.

Does a dead click mean something on my store is broken?

Not by itself. It means the click landed outside every control of the section. A missing link is one reason, but a pop-up opened by a script counts as dead too. Open the section in the theme editor and click it yourself.

Is a dead click the same as clicking again and again?

No. Store Decode does not single out repeated clicks: it counts every dead click, so one visitor clicking five times adds five.

How can I find dead clicks without session recordings?

Store Decode counts them for you and records no screens. Type “Homepage sections with dead clicks” in Find on Home or Explore, and the page map opens coloured by dead clicks. What Store Decode collects lists what is and is not kept.

Related

• The page map: a section heatmap of your Shopify homepage covers the map’s four colourings.
• How Store Decode chooses an observation has the full rule behind the card.

See the page map with the sample store’s numbers