Thread

I’m currently working on a site that will feature slightly longer articles and I’m wondering whether I should paginate or not, and what people here consider the pro’s and cons of both.

I really don’t mind scrolling through a longer webpage but some clients seem to have an aversion to their scroll wheel 😊

So, I’m asking: pagination yes or no and what do you consider the pros or cons of pagination?
Thanks for any input you can give on the matter…

The only use of pagination that I can see is for serving up more ads - so unless the site gets ad revenue, I say no.

I personally prefer things to be on the one page. Whilst I’m not totally against entry pagination I prefer everything on the one page. Also for the page to not be too long either unless it’s a detailed tutorial or something like that. Actually if it’s a tutorial then that would be one of the times that I might welcome pagination.

Best wishes,

Mark

I’m not big on paginating articles. I prefer my article all in one place and find having to click through to another page more frustrating than scrolling. Particularly on the 5th page. Especially if I want to refer back to something written earlier.

People out there who print webpages would be less pleased too.

But SEOs might be able to make a good case for bigger footprint and topic-based pagination.

And people using one of those new-fangled internet in a small box that fits in your pocket may appreciate it - I don’t know.

I imagine there are usability studies out there that compare the drop off of splitting pages to distance down a page.

it’s another of those ‘it depends’ things I guess and will depend on your audience, the content and its context.

To your clients allergic to scroll wheels I would say use the up and down buttons on their keyboard!

To your clients allergic to scroll wheels I would say use the up and down buttons on their keyboard!

Not sure if you can do this on a PC or not but on a Mac you can click on the page if your cursor happens to be in the location bar and then you can press the Space bar to scroll also.

Best wishes,

Mark

What are the objectives of the site? Page views? Advertising impressions? Go with pagination.

One other consideration is the length of the article. 5,000 words seems awfully long for a single page, so pagination might be worthwhile.

From experience I can tell you that readership of subsequent pages drops off dramatically. I’ve had some sites with four and five pages of an article. Page 2 gets perhaps 60% to 70% of Page 1. Page 3 even less. Page 4 even less.

Site articles will typically around the 2000 word mark, if that helps. Thanks for the input so far 😊

I’ve found that if the content on the page is engaging enough then I don’t mind scrolling.  Like reading EE forum threads.  They tend to be quite long, but if their interesting enough I keep scrolling.

“Oh!  You say there’s a second page to this tread once I scrolled 18 times to get to the bottom?  Don’t mind if I have another, Thank you. Click.”

A couple examples would be “A List Apart” and Andy Rutledge’s, “Design View”.  Their articles tend to be quite long, but they are interesting enough to keep going to the bottom.

Yeah, A List Apart is one of the examples I mentioned to the client of a single page design done right, although they do paginate the comments…

Yeah, A List Apart is one of the examples I mentioned to the client of a single page design done right, although they do paginate the comments…

I’ve started doing something similar. Articles up to 2,000 words go on a single page, but I’ve moved Comments/Preview to a separate page, and I paginate the comments.

Well, we finally settled on something similar to the NY Times approach: paginate in 2 parts but giving the user a “display single page” option.

Well, we finally settled on something similar to the NY Times approach: paginate in 2 parts but giving the user a “display single page” option.

I like that. More billable hours.

😉

Sounds good to me too. A nice middle ground.

Well done on that one e-man.

Best wishes,

Mark

Well, we finally settled on something similar to the NY Times approach: paginate in 2 parts but giving the user a “display single page” option.

I like that. More billable hours.

😉

Sweet 😊  But actually, I think I’ll just create a “full_article” template group that displays the article in full without the pagination. Shouldn’t take that long…

Probably around 10 seconds less than the paginated version I would think 😉

Don’t forget to show us the site when it’s up and ready. If you can that is?

Best wishes,

Mark