Why Scrolling is the New Click
by anthony on 01/10/12 at 12:18 pm
Which is better for users, scrolling or clicking? This is the question that designers have to think about when they’re designing page flow. Clicking offers users a menu of links that take them to a new page. Scrolling offers users all the content divided into different sections on a single page.
Many years ago, clicking was the simple answer to this question. The general thought was that if you made your page too long, users would only view and read the top half and glance over or ignore the bottom half. Today, things have changed. Many users do scroll to the end of the page and have no problem doing so. Scrolling has become a second-nature and clicking a chore. As user behavior changes over time, designers need to take that into account in their designs.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both scrolling and clicking. However, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for scrolling. Scrolling is faster for users than clicking. With mouse wheels and touchpad swipes, users can scroll through content with a flick of a finger. Compared that with clicking, where users have to find the link, read it, target it, click it and wait for the page to load.
Users get content in the order that it’s designed on the page with a glimpse of everything. With clicking, users can skip a link and go to the next one without ever visiting the pages they skipped.
Scrolling keeps users in their reading flow. They scroll to continue reading until they read the end of the page. Clicking breaks the user’s reading flow because after they’re through with a page, they have to stop and click the link to the next one. Users also don’t have to wait for a new page to load, which can further break reading flow. All they have to do is scroll to the next section.
Clicking doesn’t win out on speed or ease of use, but it also has its advantages. Clicking allows you to track user clicks to a page with analytics. You can’t do this with scrolling. The only thing you can track is the top-level page, not the sub-sections.
Each page will have a link that you can share with others. This link will also index in search engines. With scrolling, only the top-level page will index.
There are trade-offs between clicking and scrolling. It seems that scrolling is better for usability. But clicking is better for analytics and search engines. As the designer, it’s your job to weigh what’s important. Knowing the advantages of scrolling and clicking will help you decide which way to go. However, if the user experience is what you’re after, scrolling is the answer.
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visitor
Jan 10th, 2012
“…Clicking allows you to track user clicks to a page with analytics. You can’t do this with scrolling.”
You can accomplish this with various features offered by ClickTale.
Glad that you pointed out the topic of analytic here – many designers/programmers do not consider the data/analytic side when designing.
Pagination does offer easier implementation of event trigger/custom tracking within the ‘traditional’ clickstream analysis tool like GA, SiteCatalyst, etc.
I haven’t used it to know how it exactly plays out, but I believe SiteCatalyst offers a plug-in to measure percentage of the page viewed and pass the variable to next page view.
Tony
Jan 10th, 2012
Good hint.
Maybe this happened because of the mouse scroll wheel, that is avaliable in many mouses today.
Mike @ YasTech Web Design
Jan 10th, 2012
I would like to see more scrolling pages vs. clicking. It will be interesting to see how quick we will see more scrolling sites on the web though. It’s a whole new design style that people will have to learn.
dr0i
Jan 11th, 2012
Combine scrolling with clicking: using anchors.
Josh Humble
Jan 12th, 2012
I use anchors on some of my scrolling sites, and this usability vs search issue has been on my plate recently. I’m wondering how anchors affect SEO? It is a URL modification, however, page title and description tags can’t be specified separately, per section.
Matt Fry
Jan 20th, 2012
Here’s a pretty good article about this very thing:
Daniele
Jan 11th, 2012
I believe that the old “click” paradigm (trigger a click event to change the location ad load a new content) is going to die, i think also that the real difference is no between click or scroll, but is on the paradigm used for content loading.
Now with web apps we use prefetch content or preload them as inline hidden blocks.
Scroll or click are just events triggered to choose when and how show our content.
Choosing between scroll or click is a choose that a designer have to do on relationship to project target.
Agree with you when you say that “There are advantages and disadvantages to both scrolling and clicking.”, but the first disadvantage of scrolling is the inability of create a direct relationship between what user wants and what the app is providing to him.
now let me apologize for my bad english and I congratulate you for you all your good articles.
Lady blah blah
Jan 11th, 2012
But what about accessibility? For those who have pain scrolling, this makes the content further down the page inaccessible without suffering pain. If scrolling is implemented, would it be best to have skip links too to ensure keyboard-only users can tab from section to section without having to scroll through everything. It is also important to consider screen reader users; proper headings will have to be used to ensure they can easily understand and navigate between the different sections.
NK
Jan 11th, 2012
Do not the Page Up/Page Down and Home/End keys solve this issue?
Tim Meers
Jan 11th, 2012
I personally like the idea of scrolling over clicking. Though at my last two jobs in LOB apps it was required to fit everything possible on one page, with limited resolution, than click or scroll. Then you have the issue of it just looking like a pile of garbage, with no clicking or scrolling.
I’m more in favor of a good combination of both. Less important details should be tucked away with an easy click to make them appear inline with what you clicked.
Mathieu Brault
Jan 11th, 2012
Very interesting article.
The application we develop lets the user play with ~50 different types of entities. Each type has its own set of configs. Up to now we’ve been using a tab-based approach to categorize all the configurations.
Users get lost trying to find what they need and need to navigate from tab to tab.
In order to improve the overall usability, we have been thinking about using a scroll approach to make things simpler for the users. This would require a huge effort from our dev team and our tech writing team. This article gives us (designers) one more argument to favor the scroll approach.
iPoul
Jan 11th, 2012
How about anchor links to the scrolling sections, then we have clicks and scrolling on one page, no load, and i think you can trick google analytics to actual track the hits on anchors as well, tho its disabled pr. default.
Ivan Vandervaeren
Jan 11th, 2012
Hi Anthony,
You’re right, your statement is correct and the debate about scrolling vs clicking has ended a while ago, actually. But there is one thing that, in my opinion, needs to be stressed : people do not have problems scrolling anymore AS LONG AS they still feel an interest in the content they see. Hence the importance of showing most important content on top of the page. Indeed, should the user not find anything relevant above the fold, he will never bother scrolling the page to see if it comes later on.
Nice article anyway.
Ivan
Jan Van den Bergh
Jan 11th, 2012
What if both are combined i.e. one page with menu (*)? Does it make a difference when the menu stays in view when scrolling?
(*) Example: TOC of articles in interaction-design.org encyclopedia
Jeff
Jan 11th, 2012
I disagree that clicking it better for analytics. All you know is that someone loaded the page, you don’t necessarily know they looked at it. Using jQuery waypoints you can get much finer grained analytics in terms of what someone actually read (or at least what was on their viewport).
http://imakewebthings.github.com/jquery-waypoints/
Indexing and SEO still favors clicking though.
Ted Goas
Jan 11th, 2012
Yep, Waypoints has an example just for that: http://imakewebthings.github.com/jquery-waypoints/scroll-analytics/
Solid points, overall. I often find myself frustrated that I can’t get to the footer on an infinity scrolling site, but that’s a design problem.
Larry
Jan 11th, 2012
Also if your revenue model is based on impressions (classic CPM model) then you will most likely need to address the loss in pageviews.
Marie
Jan 11th, 2012
Neilsen Norman Group always said that scrolling was a better usability standard.
Fernando
Jan 13th, 2012
Scrolling is a trend! Strategically, it could be a highlight of a special content. I mean a satellite site. Now we can’t even talk about just a website. We have to talk about a digital platform. Even better a communication digital platform.
A system consisting of several channels, such as an official website, a social networking applications strategy, mobile applications, and everything in between them. It’s about communicating values. It’s about engage the audience with a well-structured user experience. Clicking, scrolling or TOUCHING are simply pathways to get the information “they are looking for”.
Johnny
Jan 20th, 2012
I think in a way you’re right, and for some applications I can see scrolling outdoing clicking. However I don’t think we’ll ever eliminate clicking or the subtle feedback that it gives the user. It’s more about making the user feel as natural as possible when they interact with an object. That’s true usability.
bigal
Jan 21st, 2012
People only visit one or two pages. Designers believe a visitor is going to interact on the same level they and the clients see the site. Most people never see the inside of their google settings, so forget the bulk will pay attention at all.
People will scroll all day long because it’s the sensation of rubbing a booger off your finger, while click means the unknown. Designing for booger rolling seems logical.
Ravi
Jan 24th, 2012
I prefer clicking over scrolling although I can’t exactly pinpoint why. Scrolling is fine if the content is all related in some way, but if it’s not then I like to put it on a separate page if only for SEO reasons. I also don’t like it if I go to a site and then click a button only to watch it scroll for about 2 seconds to the correct part of the page.
Juan Hidalgo Reina
Jan 27th, 2012
I prefer scrolling over clicking….
Rigel Glen
Jan 28th, 2012
Scrolling is an inaccurate way of navigating, and as far as page loads go, clicking and AJAX are good friends
Scott Grodberg
Jan 31st, 2012
Gotta Agree with Johnny on the natural, tactile feedback of a click. Way more satisfying than a flick, but that’s just my $.02
Jean-Sébastien Ordonneau
Feb 6th, 2012
I think that scrolling can cause other problem – especially for tactil device; you can loose track of the last line you were reading.
Either the text structure (title, paragraph) is very clear, either you can use an alternative navigation.
But for very long paragraph, as in novel for example, it still remains an issue.
Adam
Feb 13th, 2012
Scrolling and clicking need to be used respectively of the content and the device they are being viewed on. Most users want to get to the information that they are interested quickly, and while scrolling is more acceptable, how far would you let a user scroll to find a piece of content they are interested in? And more importantly how would the user direct a friend to an important part of the content?