A few years ago, every single website you landed on had two things:
- A flash intro video
- Auto-scrolling navigation
Nowadays, you’re beginning to see these things less and less. Not just because we’ve moved on from them, but because so many of us are using other means to navigate our way around the internet. Smartphones and tablets have changed the way we view the web, and can make these types of websites seem outdated, and unnecessary. Flash doesn’t work with iOS, so good luck trying to access funky flash websites on your iPhone, while the ease of touch-screen technology as well as scroll wheels in your computer mouse means that manually scrolling a long page is no longer an issue.
Pages with frames in them – i.e. where the sidebar scrolls down the page with you, may seem somewhat useful, but can be a nightmare on most handheld devices. As well as that, Framed websites can have a negative effect on your Search Engine Optimisation, which is hugely detrimental to a website’s success. What’s worse, if you’re viewing the website on a small resolution screen, you may even end up with multiple scroll-bars for multiple frames. Too many scrolls spoil the broth!
Manual scrolling is very much en vogue at the moment, and rightly so. Return to top is a handy little feature (we even have it on our blog, go on, scroll down to the bottom of the page to check it out), but when it only takes two seconds to slide your finger along the screen, it’s not as important as it once was.
From our extensive research into the world of eCommerce websites – it pays to know what else is out there and what are the latest trends when you’re designing and building these things – we have found that a lot of online shoppers hate clicking Next Page, Next Page, Next Page to see all the items when browsing eCommerce sites.
Most of our customers prefer to have the option where they can “See All” or “Show All”. That way, you can easily see everything at once – allowing you to find that perfect outfit instantly, rather than clicking through page after page of party dresses.
A lot of our recent eCommerce sites have the option to Show All, as it’s what most customers want. It may seem counter-intuitive and slow page load times, but if you take a look at the most popular news website in the world – the Daily Mail, you’ll see that that’s exactly what the people want. Everything in front of them, right now, and easily accessible.
If you really want to spend your day scrolling, I’d suggest having a gander at this wonderful edition of the XKCD online comic.
