Have you noticed a change in people in recent years? Tempers are getting shorter, people seem perpetually bored and dissatisfied. They always seem to be looking for the next pleasurable moment wherever they can find it… and they want it RIGHT NOW.

What has prompted this change?

Is it a change in parenting styles? Is society to blame? Is it our growing dependence on electronic devices?

One source of our increased need for constant instant gratification could be directly linked to the amount of time we spend online, specifically on social media. Our social media feeds are an endless stream of entertainment, providing small bursts of happiness hormones on a loop. But the problem is, after awhile, those small bursts become addicting.

Spending time online trains our brains that one click equals happiness for a split second. And we seek out that one click time after time. Activities that require more effort than one click just don’t seem to be worth the effort. We truly are becoming a One Click Society.

We’ve learned to click play on videos for instant entertainment. We click on links to be fed our favorite endless stream of content. We click on page after page of online shopping options, and our purchases arrive a few days later on our doorsteps… all with one click.

We browse the internet while at dinner, late at night when we can’t sleep, even in the bathroom. We’re connected 24/7 and at the beck and call of our digital devices. There’s a certain amount of disconnectedness that comes with all that connectivity. Not only is every click increasingly less satisfying, it grows impersonal at the same time. We lose ourselves in our online personas and activities. Each click draws us closer to the next click until we’re caught in an endless loop of just one more click.

Where does all this lead and how does this relate to today’s business world? The one click mentality isn’t going away any time soon. People want to click. They expect instant entertainment, instant gratification from every click.

This means your marketing efforts need to be as one-click-friendly as possible. People want to get results with as few clicks as possible. The fewer steps to complete an order process, the better. The more positive reinforcement you provide for each click, the happier your customer. People enjoy clickable content. Mixed media integration provides more opportunities to click and be happy.

Your customers want one click features like autofill fields, easy account login, easy contact forms, multimedia content, simple purchase options, and easy to find product reviews.

One click marketing for our One Click Society is the way of the future.

Thanks to KissMetrics for the infographic.

Thanks to Social Media Today for the infographic.