The Endless / Infinite Page Usability Issues
The endless page / infinite page technique is becoming an increasingly common design feature. For people who aren’t familiar with what it is - it basically removes the need for paging or next / previous buttons on a page with a list of results. Instead of people needing to click next or a page number to see more results - be it a list of products or blog posts, when the user gets to the bottom of the page, it automatically loads in more items, if the user kept scrolling they could effectively see the entire list of items on one page.
This sounds amazing but as it’s a new feature the usability of the concept hasn’t seemed to have been discussed much. I have seen both good and bad implementations of the endless page and people shouldn’t assume that it’s always the best solution just because it’s the latest trend.
Good Examples of the Endless Page:
Film Review Friday
Film Review Friday works well as it has a large and clear ‘click here for more reviews’ button at the bottom of the list. As the user is clicking the link they are clear on what the page is doing when more results appear.
Bing Image Search
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=creativebinge&go=&form=QBIR&qs=n
Bing works quite well as the endless list is contained in the scrolling box. This is good as it means the user can still access anything below the list and the page doesn’t jump around when more results are loaded in.
CSS Line
This works fairly well as there isn’t much in the footer, so the user can still easily access the links, also it indicates when teh results are loading so the user hopefully knows what’s going on. On the downside, you still have no idea of when the list will end or how many results there are.
IDSGN Design Blog
Again, this design benefits from making the user click to load more results in. This allows the user to be clear on what the page is doing. They may have likely chosen this option as they have a number of links in the footer.
Bad examples of the Endless Page:
- http://www.paranaiv.no/inspiration
- http://doitforthefame.com/
- http://reformrevolution.com/
- http://visuelle.co.uk/
In my view, in these examples, usability suffers from the use of endless page. When the user scrolls to the bottom I think they are most likely to believe they are reaching the bottom of the page, and as the results are automatically loading, the user may be initially unclear what is happening. In the first example, Eventually the scroll bar gets tiny and is hard to browse the massive list of results.
Also there is no indication of how many results there are. The results are infinite but surely the user may want to know when it will end, or if they’re going to be sat there forever until the length of the page is unmanageable.
Also, if any of these pages had footer links, they could be unreachable.
Summary
So to summarise, I think endless page is far better when using the ‘view more results’ type link at the bottom of the page or have the list contained inside a scrollable box. When not used I think there are some serious usability issues with the page automatically extended without any user action and that case would favour going ‘old school’ and using good old paging!
I think that there’s a case for having a button, and not having one.
The answer to “Should I have endless scrolling without a button?” is also answered by “Am I trying to sell something to the user?”
You want to give the user as little reason to go away as possible, and giving them a button and having to wait for ‘more’, isn’t so good.
Film Review Friday works well because, although the site does sell (through affiliation), that isn’t the sole aim of the website.
Comment by Dan Atkinson — Wednesday February 24th, 2010 @ 16:15
I think the real usability issue here isn’t that the user has to or doesn’t have to use a button. I agree with @Dan Atkinson, they both have their place.
The back button (the most commonly used of all browser buttons) has a habit of giving these types of pages issues. With FilmReviewFriday if you click “more reviews” multiple times then click on a film. When you hit back you are not where you left off.
This can obviously be fixed with a fair bit of javascript but we choose not too because of the longer load times and generally annoying javascript. As far as the site goes its not a major concern but with an online store it can become more of an issue.
ps. Thanks for the FilmReviewFriday mention
Comment by David McGeorge — Wednesday February 24th, 2010 @ 19:29
Thanks for the comments. I would still argue that there are usability issues with implentations that don’t have a ‘more results’ button or are not contained in a scrolling box.
Though I see your point about product driven sites opposed to things like gallery sites. On a product driven site there are more issues to consider, such as the user finding an item they looked at earlier; wanting to know the total number of results or more information to be displayed per item (in which case the page could become unusably long / tiny tiny scroll bar). These points are less important on a simpler results list like a gallery and most likely simpler website (no footer links).
Either way I think my biggest gripe is the lack of user action to trigger more items loading. Maybe after a minute the user will realise what’s going on, but surely initially they may be a little confused:
- why is the list changing
-why is my scroll bar getting smaller
- how do I get to the bottom of the page
- when will the page stop loading in more results?
- I didn’t want to see more results, just scroll to the bottom
With user action, they are triggering the event and then immediately clear what is happening.
Saying that, these are assumptions, it would be great to see some usability tests on the issue.
Comment by Richard Stelmach — Thursday February 25th, 2010 @ 14:08
You don’t give the user enough credit, Rich.
I don’t think it’ll confuse them that the scrollbar is getting smaller.
Also, why would the user want to see the bottom of the page? If they want something that’s in the footer, then we shouldn’t be serving useful content that’s at the bottom of the page.
Comment by Dan Atkinson — Saturday April 17th, 2010 @ 16:32