Infinite scrolling: Trendy but a poor web design choice for most

Is infinite scrolling (a page that continuously loads as users scroll down) a good design choice for you?

Think of your social media feeds. You scroll down but never reach the end. Infinite scrolling was first introduced in 2006, and for some, it is frustrating. For others, seeing an endless, seamless stream of content is thrilling.

Unless your website is a newsfeed, you might want to think twice before choosing infinite scrolling. Why? Because you need to take your site visitors’ user experience (UX) into account.

If you have a professional or informative website, infinite scrolling, the lack of control and the constant loading of fresh content can distract your readers. And at some point, they may abandon your page, seek out your competitors or miss valuable content buried in your feed.

In addition, on websites that consist of only one infinitely scrolling page, the site navigation can get messy since menu items at the top of the main page (i.e., About, Services, Contact) are not linked to separate pages. Instead, those menu items link and jump to anchors that divide the infinite-scrolling page into invisible sections.

And when it comes to content strategy and copy flow, it is almost impossible to specify a content and element hierarchy when everything scrolls by.

For an e-commerce site, infinite scrolling has become a marketing tool to keep users scrolling and potentially buying. There, it makes sense. On those sites, users should be able to filter out the content they need or, at the very least, see a “load more” button with a page count to get an idea of how long they need to scroll to reach the end.

All other sites do better with separate pages. Here’s why:

Infinite scrolling...

• makes specific content hard to find and revisit
• taxes users because there’s “no end in sight,” no sense of completion or of finishing a task
• breaks the scroll bar and displays the page length inaccurately
• increases page loading speed, which affects site ranking in Google
• interferes with site analytics and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• prevents users from bookmarking site sections
• doesn’t guarantee that Google’s robots will index the entire content for its search engine since most of it stays hidden
• prevents users from going back to a particular piece of content when reloading a page
• disables the website’s footer, which provides valuable space for information, like copyright/contact info and site navigation
• causes accessibility issues since screen-readers can’t scroll and will only read the first chunk of content

So, before planning a design that relies on infinite scrolling, find out who your users are and consider their goals and needs.

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