April 24, 2015

With online businesses wanting to create better and seamless user experience, a lot of companies are opting for websites with an infinite scroll. Infinite scroll websites are coded in such a way that they continuously load content as a user scrolls down a web page. The best examples of such websites are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. However, infinite scroll website is not always the right choice for every business. Whether or not you should implement infinite scrolling depends upon the type of information that you want to present to your website visitors. Read on to know the pros and cons of a website with infinite scroll design:

Pros

  • Keeps Users Engaged: Infinite scrolling is a good option for websites that need to keep the users engaged for a longer time. As the content continues to appear, users keep on scrolling down the web page. Having to click on a ‘see more’ button might break the link of the users.
  • Great For Mobile And Touch Screen Devices: Infinite scroll design is a perfect fit for mobile and touch screen devices. Users just need to scroll down to view more information without having the need to load a separate web page. The information on these websites is presented in boxes which are quite appealing for the users to click to tap for more.
  • Easy To Manage Real Time Information: Websites that have to provide real time information to their users work well with infinite scroll design. For instance, continuous updating of news feed on Facebook allows the users to conveniently scroll through the entire content.

Cons

  • Lost Footer Information: One of the biggest drawbacks of infinite scroll design is that users are unable to reach the footer. People often refer to the footer for important information about the website such as contact details, social media links, copyright information, terms of use etc.
  • Inability To Search Specific Information: Users need to scroll through the entire page to search for anything specific on the website. Similarly, they cannot skip anycontent to view something that interests them.
  • Mapping Problems: Without pagination, users may feel disoriented about where they are on a particular pageor where the previously viewed content has gone. Infinite scroll websites do not have any back button to view the page visited earlier.

Before making the move towards an infinite scroll design, make sure the page design rightly matches the purpose of your website. We, at Centex Technologies, provide complete web design/development solutions to businesses. For more information, call us at (855) 375-9654.