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Stop Pagination Now

slate.com

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Re: Stop Pagination Now

#21

Post by franze »

djloche wrote: post #10

>"Pagination persists because splitting a single-page article into two pages can, in theory, yield twice as many opportunities to display ads—though in practice it doesn’t because lots of readers never bother to click past the first page." As much as I hate it and would love to think that pagination is just a publication pipedream, it's not. Some online publications have spent (and will spend if they're interested in…

the A/B test of one of my clients (in the b2c vertical) showed (for their site with their users) that people clicked more pages (which was kinda expected), and stayed longer on the website overall - with pagination (instead of endless scrolling).

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#22

Post by bobsy »

As soon as I hit a page with multiple pages I almost always lose interest and immediately leave. I can read down a single page. However when I see an article with 6 pages I am like ... ... sod that.

Its not so much the reading. Its the slow page loading which gets me down. If people did pagination right with ajax preloading the next page then I would be happy. 99% of sites do not do this. Instead their sites are slow because they have to load a bunch of third party ad's. Moving from page to page when each page takes 2-3 seconds to load kills the reading experience.

A Wired article featured on HN recently. I don't remember what it was about but it had a gallery on it. You would think in today's day and age when you click the thumbnail the main image would change. On this wired story no.. the whole page reloaded. Due to third party ad's each page load took ages. The page didn't bounce down to where the image should show. While I thought the topic was interesting the user experience was so terrible I abandoned it.

If you are going to force pagination on readers then have a single page option. Preferably at the top of the article. This way you cater for everyone.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#24

Post by jaxonrice »

bobsy wrote: post #22

As soon as I hit a page with multiple pages I almost always lose interest and immediately leave. I can read down a single page. However when I see an article with 6 pages I am like ... ... sod that. Its not so much the reading. Its the slow page loading which gets me down. If people did pagination right with ajax preloading the next page then I would be happy. 99% of sites do not do this. Instead their sites are slow…

Most Wired articles that contain galleries have a 'view all' link to a page that has all of the gallery images on it. The link isn't well signposted but the resulting page offers a far better reading experience.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#25

Post by pinchyfingers »

No, they should continue paginating because most readers will just click to the second page and Slate will increase their ad impressions. I'm sure that Slate has tested this and found it to be true. If there was something different they could do to increase ad views, they'd be doing that instead.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#26

Post by duopixel »

franze wrote: post #21
djloche wrote: post #10

>"Pagination persists because splitting a single-page article into two pages can, in theory, yield twice as many opportunities to display ads—though in practice it doesn’t because lots of readers never bother to click past the first page." As much as I hate it and would love to think that pagination is just a publication pipedream, it's not. Some online publications have spent (and will spend if they're interested in…

the A/B test of one of my clients (in the b2c vertical) showed (for their site with their users) that people clicked more pages (which was kinda expected), and stayed longer on the website overall - with pagination (instead of endless scrolling).

Wouldn't it be possible that the time lost paginating accounts for the longer stay?

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#27

Post by Osiris »

Pagination is particularly problematic on mobile devices where connections are slow with high latency. It's much faster to load a single page than to force users to click though to more pages.

There's a few websites I run into when looking at news on my phone that have a pagination option plus a "Full article" button. I don't understand why it doesn't just load the full article. Getting to the end of the page and having to WAIT over 10 seconds to find out what the next paragraph says is frustrating.

As others point out, I rarely click past the first page when I see pagination because I hate waiting for the load files. I read a heck of a lot faster than a browser can go fetch and render a new page. I'd rather take that time to read than wait.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#28

Post by 0r3jq4a0j »

joshuarrrr wrote: post #18
0r3jq4a0j wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it didn't improve their revenues, they wouldn't be doing it. I can assure you that this is absolutely not the case. If you look at Plotz's comment, it's exactly what most editors will say: Pages that run too long can irritate readers. We run stories of 2,000, 4,000, even 6,000 words, and to run that much text down a single page can daunt and depress a reader. So pagination can make pages seem more welcoming, more…

I'll ignore your general disdain for writers and editors, and point out that not all readers want the same thing. I've pushed for non-paginated articles at my publication, but I admit that I'm not always happy with the result, and we do hear reader complaints about not being able to orient themselves in an article like this: http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/the-cosmolog... (hopefully a wider content-we…

your general disdain for writers and editors

It's completely justified. For example: show me where in Poltz's long career as a writer and editor that he secretly squeezed in the years of UX, design, and development experience that qualifies him to make a statement about designing user interfaces.

The problem is that editors simply don't believe there is special expertise here or that it requires anything beyond their insight.

I admit that I'm not always happy with the result ... http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/the-cosmolog...

This design doesn't incorporate many of the base standards for displaying long-form web content. Font size is way too small (should be 16-18px, 14px absolute minimum), column is too wide ("ideal" is 66 characters, though there's a wide range). A good starter article: http://informationarchitects.net/blog/100e2r/ There are many, many more.

Until that page is completely redesigned and returned to a readable baseline, it's difficult to discuss or test anything.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#29

Post by djloche »

krogsgard wrote: post #14
djloche wrote: post #10

>"Pagination persists because splitting a single-page article into two pages can, in theory, yield twice as many opportunities to display ads—though in practice it doesn’t because lots of readers never bother to click past the first page." As much as I hate it and would love to think that pagination is just a publication pipedream, it's not. Some online publications have spent (and will spend if they're interested in…

Pageviews only matter in, obviously, a pageview driven ad model. In other instances, like the author mentions with Buzzfeed, pure pageviews aren't the entire goal. If publishers can get advertisers more interested in unique visitors and (especially) length of time on the site, then pageviews could be less important, and terrible practices like Mashable-esque page-reload sliders and six page articles can start to go a…

It's less pageviews and more reader engagement. You want to provide your salespeople solid evidence to convince the advertisers to pay the premium rate.

While perhaps the last part of the deal is measured in ad impressions, all the other facts and figures are important: time on site, pages per unique visitor, where the site's traffic is coming from, etc.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#30

Post by kmfrk »

Pagination is perfectly fine, as long as it

1) isn't used to generate page views,

2) does not insult my capacity to read more than 50 words at a time (FOOORBES!),

3) is not used on a website that loads a lot of shit on each page

I don't use it too much, but unless the site provides anchor links to save your progress like bookmarks, it's going to be a pan to save your progress. Have fun reading that 15-page New Yorker article in one go.

Pagination sucks, when there isn't a need for it. Sometimes there is.

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