How to Set Up a First-Click Test Section¶

You've got a design - a screen, a packaging layout, an ad - and a real question underneath it: will people actually find the thing you want them to find, on their own, without being told where to look? Asking them directly ("where would you click to find Settings?") gets you a self-reported guess, shaped by how carefully someone thinks they'd behave rather than how they actually would. First-Click Test sidesteps the guess entirely - show the image, let them click, record exactly where.

This guide covers building one: the choices that actually matter, and the patterns that produce a heatmap worth reading rather than a scatter of noise.

Table of Contents¶

• The Anatomy: Image, Zones, Clicks, and Messages
• Step-by-Step: Building Your First First-Click Test Section
• One Click or Several: Choosing Correctly
• Drawing Zones That Produce a Clean Read
• What You Get Back: Reporting and Exports
• Best Practices
• Illustrative Walkthrough: Testing a Settings Icon
• FAQ

The Anatomy: Image, Zones, Clicks, and Messages¶

A First-Click Test section is a handful of independently-set pieces:

A few details worth knowing before you build:

• Zones are geometry, not a list of named options a respondent picks from. You draw a rectangle; nothing about its shape, position, or label is ever shown. This is the opposite of how the Stimulus Section's highlight areas work - see First-Click Test vs. Highlight Areas if you're choosing between the two.
• A zone label is for you, not your respondents. It shows up in your Click Heatmap report so you know which zone is which at a glance - "Settings icon," "Primary CTA" - but a respondent never sees it. Leave it blank and the report just numbers your zones in order.
• There's no buffer or countdown before the image appears. Unlike some other interactive section types, First-Click Test drops a respondent straight from your intro message to a "Show Image" button, then straight to the interactive image the moment they tap it - no forced waiting.

Step-by-Step: Building Your First First-Click Test Section¶

1. Add a First-Click Test section. From inside an Advanced Survey, add a new section and choose First-Click Test.
2. Upload or pick your image. Choose an existing image from your Media Library, or upload a new one - the same picker used by the Stimulus Section and Pairwise Comparison.
3. Draw your target zone(s). Click and drag directly on the image to mark a rectangle. Add as many as your test needs - you're not limited to one, if you're checking whether people find any of several acceptable targets.
4. Label zones if it'll help you read results later. Optional - a blank label just becomes "Zone N" in your reports.
5. Write your intro message. This is the one thing every respondent sees before the image appears - make it specific about the task ("Where would you tap to adjust your notification settings?"), not just "look at this image."
6. Set Max Clicks. Leave it at 1 for a true first-click test, or raise it (up to 10) if you want to see everywhere a respondent would try, not just their first instinct.
7. Preview before publishing. Step through the section yourself to confirm the intro message reads clearly and your zones are positioned where you intend - previewing shows you the zones since you're the creator, even though a real respondent never sees them.
8. Publish and share. A section needs at least one zone before it can be published - with zero, every click would trivially be a miss.

One Click or Several: Choosing Correctly¶

This is the setting that most changes what question your section is actually answering.

Choose a single click (Max Clicks = 1) when you want the classic first-click signal - someone's very first, unprompted instinct, before any trial and error has a chance to correct it. This is the right default for most usability-style questions: "will someone find this on the first try."

Raise Max Clicks when your real question is broader than a first instinct - "show me everywhere you'd be willing to try," or "how many attempts does it take before someone finds it." A respondent can stop early with a "Done" control once they've clicked at least once, or the section finishes automatically once they hit your configured maximum.

A useful test: if what you actually want to know is "did their very first guess land," leave it at 1. If you'd learn something real from seeing a second or third attempt too - how someone recovers from an initial miss, for instance - raise the limit.

Drawing Zones That Produce a Clean Read¶

Draw zones as big as the real target, not bigger. A zone padded well beyond the actual clickable element inflates your hit rate and tells you less about genuine precision than a tightly-drawn one would.

Use multiple zones when more than one answer is genuinely acceptable. If either of two icons would reasonably get someone to the feature you're testing, draw both as separate zones rather than forcing a single "correct" target - your Click Heatmap report will still show you the full picture of where clicks actually landed, hit or miss.

Don't draw zones to cover every plausible guess. A test with zones blanketing most of the image stops measuring precision at all - it starts measuring whether someone clicked on the image, which usually isn't the question you set out to answer.

What You Get Back: Reporting and Exports¶

• The Click Heatmap widget. Every click - from every respondent, across every click they made if Max Clicks is above 1 - appears as a dot over your stimulus image, colored by click order and shaded by whether it landed in a zone. See Reading Click Heatmap Results for how to interpret it.
• Two headline stats. Median time to first click and median total time on the section, shown right alongside the heatmap.
• DOCX export. Your section exports with the stimulus image and zone outlines drawn directly on it, labeled, so a reader going through a shared document sees exactly what you were testing without opening the live survey.

Best Practices¶

• Write your intro message as a real task, not a vague prompt. "Where would you tap to change your password?" produces a cleaner signal than "take a look at this screen."
• Decide Max Clicks before you draw your zones. A single-click test and a ten-click test are different research instruments, and the number of zones worth drawing can shift depending on which one you're running.
• Test one specific finding question per section. If you have several unrelated things to test on the same screen, consider whether separate sections (or separate zones with distinct labels) would give you a cleaner, more specific read than one section trying to do everything at once.
• Pair it with a follow-up question when you want the "why." The heatmap tells you where people clicked, not why - an open-ended follow-up question elsewhere in the survey, run through Text Analytics, fills in the reasoning a click alone can't.

Illustrative Walkthrough: Testing a Settings Icon¶

A product team has redesigned a mobile app's top navigation bar and wants to know whether people will actually find the new Settings icon on their own, before shipping it to everyone. They build one First-Click Test section, upload a screenshot of the redesigned bar, and draw a single zone tightly around the new icon - no padding beyond its actual tap target. They leave Max Clicks at 1, since the real question is a first-instinct one: will someone's very first tap land on it. The intro message reads: "Where would you tap to open your account settings?"

Results come back showing a 54% first-click hit rate - better than their old design's historical rate, but not as high as the team had hoped. The Click Heatmap shows a second, smaller cluster of clicks landing consistently on a nearby icon they hadn't drawn a zone around - which, once they look again, is a reasonable visual mistake: that icon uses a similar shape and sits only slightly further from where people expect settings to live. That cluster, clearly visible as soon as the heatmap is overlaid on the real image, becomes the concrete design problem to fix - not a vague "maybe the icon isn't obvious enough" guess.

FAQ¶

Can I see where respondents clicked even if it didn't land in a zone?
Yes - the Click Heatmap shows every click, hit or miss, so you can see patterns in where people clicked even when they missed every zone you drew.

Can I change the image after respondents have started answering?
Changing the stimulus image mid-flight makes results hard to compare across respondents who saw different versions - treat it the same as editing any other live question once real responses are coming in.

Does First-Click Test support video, like the Stimulus Section does?
No - First-Click Test works on a single static image.

Can respondents zoom in for a more precise click?
Respondents can enlarge the image into a full-screen view for a more precise click on a small screen, without changing anything about how the interaction works.