The Mason's Choice: On the Unassuming Brick No One Sees

There’s a piece of advice handed down through the years of building websites that has become as fundamental as mortar to a bricklayer: every new page must be accessible within three clicks from the homepage. It’s a rule born of a noble concern for the user experience, a guard against building labyrinths where visitors get lost and give up. Site architects meticulously plan these short, logical paths, and we call this good structure. But in our obsession with the efficiency of the path, we have forgotten about the value of the place.

This is the counterintuitive truth I’ve come to embrace: some of the most valuable pages on your site should be difficult to find. They should require a deliberate search, a specific query, or a journey of four, five, or even six clicks. They are the unassuming bricks deep within the wall, the ones that bear no decorative weight but provide the essential, quiet strength that holds everything up. These are the pages not for the casual browser, but for the seeker who has arrived with a precise need.

Consider a support article detailing a highly specific error code for a software product. A user encountering this error isn’t browsing; they are hunting. They will use your search bar. They will arrive directly from Google. For them, the three-click rule is irrelevant. What matters is the page itself—its clarity, its accuracy, its single-minded purpose. If we feel compelled to link to this page from a ‘Popular Articles’ widget on the homepage, we dilute its intent. We clutter the experience for the 99.9% of visitors who will never need it, and we subtly signal to the user who does find it that it’s just another piece of content, not the precise surgical instrument they required.

The Architecture of Intent

This isn’t an argument for poor navigation. It’s an argument for a more sophisticated understanding of intent. A site’s structure shouldn’t be a single, flat network where every node is equally prominent. It should be a topographical map, with highlands of broadly appealing content easily traversed by all, and deep valleys of specificity accessible only to those who know to look for them. A well-placed internal link still has immense power, but its power is magnified when used surgically, connecting related deep-content, not when used to plaster a shortcut to everything everywhere.

When we try to make every page a ‘three-click’ page, we inevitably flatten the hierarchy. We create dense, overwhelming menus or endless ‘related post’ feeds that prioritize proximity over purpose. The user experience suffers not from having to click more, but from being presented with too many meaningless choices. A longer, more deliberate path can be more satisfying and effective if each click is a confident step toward a known destination, rather than a guess in a crowded room.

So, the next time you map your site, grant yourself permission to build a few rooms without a front-door key. Create pages that serve a master other than casual navigation. Structure your internal links not as a web of forced connections, but as a set of trails for different kinds of travelers. Trust that your search function and the external referrers will guide the determined users to the deep content they need. The strength of a structure often lies not in the most visible beams, but in the hidden bricks that were laid with a specific, unglamorous purpose in mind.

Notes & further reading

A few pages I came back to while writing this: