Two signs of a frustrated visitor
- A rage click is when someone clicks or taps the same spot several times in quick succession. It usually means they expected something to happen and it didn’t.
- A dead click is a click on something that does nothing at all, often an image, a heading or an icon that looks like it should be a link.
Neither shows up in ordinary analytics. Visitors rarely write in to complain. They just leave.
Why they happen
- A button is broken, or only broken on certain browsers or phones.
- The page is slow to respond, so people click again.
- Something looks clickable but isn’t, like a product photo or a styled heading.
- An invisible layer, such as a cookie notice or a sticky footer, sits on top of the button.
How to fix them
- Watch the moment it happens. A recording that opens right at the rage click usually shows the cause in seconds.
- Check who it affects. If it’s only on phones or one browser, you’ve found a bug, not a design question.
- Fix the most common ones first. Rank them by how many visitors hit them, not by how annoying they look.
- Confirm the fix worked. The rage clicks should stop once the problem is gone.
Not every repeated click is a problem
Some repeated clicks are harmless: people double-click out of habit, flick through a photo carousel or select text. Look for patterns across many visitors on the same element before treating something as broken.
Rage and dead clicks in Cuttl
Cuttl detects rage, dead and error clicks automatically, down to the element, and groups them into issues ranked by how many visitors they affect. Each issue links to the recordings that show it. When the problem stops happening, Cuttl checks the clean visits and marks the issue fixed, and reopens it if it ever comes back.
