When the final touches are being added to the website design For any client, certain details that weren't clearly defined from the start begin to take on greater importance. One of these has to do with the improved internal navigation for the user and the tools that can be included.
When it comes to navigating the site—which is the topic we'll be covering today—we can use pagination, scrolling, or a button to load the page more content. All of these options have advantages and disadvantages when it comes to their use. In this post, we aim to explore the characteristics of each one and their importance for improve accessibility from a website, always taking into account its suitability in each case.
What kind of internal navigation do you want your website to have?
This should be the question we ask ourselves before we begin implementing it. Next, we'll spend some time on each style of web browsing and the reasons that should lead us to choose one over the other in each case.
Infinite Scroll
This is a very common practice in the most important pages that are accessed daily, such as Facebook. It allows users to browse through a vast amount of information without stopping. As long as we keep scrolling The content will appear gradually at the bottom of the screen. Below are its most important features:
- Navigation is done by more naturalized, because all you have to do is scroll down.
- The user has all the elements on the same screen, so they always remain within the the same website.
- To work with touchscreen devices It's much easier, since you don't have to click the buttons used for pagination.
- It is often used in informational websites physical businesses where not much interaction is expected.
Pagination
Allows you to display all of the Web content divided into sections across multiple pages. This happens, for example, in WordPress when posts are displayed. There are two ways to navigate between pages. First: having all the numbers that make up the page breakdown and navigate among them, or buttons that allow you to go to the next page or return to the previous one. Its features are:
- It's quite easy to locate the elements.
- There are no compatibility issues.
- The user has a greater Web Content Control, since he knows where he's going and how far he has left to go.
- Improves the bounce rate.
- The previous information is no longer visible.
‘Load More’ button or similar
It's a button that uploads content to the website gradually. This is very useful for loading the website's content slowly. When you click it, it adds content and doesn't overload the website. If you refresh the page, the text disappears again. Its most important features are:
- Allows add content little by little to avoid having too much information on a single site.
- Once the content has loaded, the user can read it all the way through without it disappearing until the page reloads.
- Improves the bounce rate.
- The information we've been looking at remains visible.
Now, depending on the type of website you have, you can choose which of the above elements is essential for creating the best internal navigation for the user. It is up to each developer to implement one or the other based on their own judgment, taking into account, of course, a number of factors, although the information above provides plenty of guidance.