The 3-second rule for customer portals
Why your client portal needs to be useful inside three seconds of someone clicking the link, and how we built Bury3D to hit that bar.
By Bury3D team
Most client portals fail the 3-second test: open the link, see exactly the one thing you came to see, no detour, no extra click. Bury3D's portal is built to that standard.
When a customer clicks their share link they should land on a viewer rendering the scan. Not a login wall, not a "verify your email" interstitial, not a navigation page that asks them which of their three projects they meant. Just the model, on the device they're holding, at the speed their thumb expects.
What we cut
- We cut the email-confirmation hop on first scan view. The link itself is the credential.
- We cut the loading splash that designers want and customers hate. The first frame of the splat is the splash.
- We cut the side panel of "About this project / Updates / Files / Invoices" tabs in the default view. They're a single subtle button if you actually want them.
What we kept
- A clear pay button when an invoice exists.
- A timestamp on the latest update so people know the shop hasn't gone silent.
- A "back to home" affordance on the org's logo, so the customer can poke around if they want to.
The compounding effect
Saving 2 seconds × every customer × every link click adds up to a friction budget you can spend on the part of the experience that actually wins repeat business — the moment they show the scan to their partner.
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