It is vital for websites to understand how they want their users to interact with their content. User Experience (UX), is all about making the way users interact with you as easy and enjoyable as possible. Traditionally websites are presented as pages and each page belongs to a section or category, users click and read pages of content they are interested in, this is known as Pagination. In this instance, all content and ads load when the page is loaded. More recently opportunities to enable users to discover new or related content without leaving the page they are on have become especially prevalent with users consuming content that is image-heavy or viewed on mobile devices. Here we discuss the two main UX techniques websites can use to keep users on the site and enable the discovery of new content while not loading all content at the initial page visit; Infinite Scroll and Load More.
Callan Smith
Walled Gardens are everywhere. Inspired analogically by the gardens of Ancient Persia, we wander around inside, safe in the knowledge, and steeped in the privilege of being allowed in. The internet was born from computer engineers and researchers’ dreams of being connected and freely sharing ideas, this has evolved into a land grab for user data, eyeballs, and clicks. The Open Web and Walled Gardens dilemma is something many online companies struggle with. Either because one may restrict and cause negative feelings while the other reduces the capability to drive revenue, both can offer scale in different ways.
We live in an era that is rich in information, so much so, that we are even spoilt for choice in how we choose to consume it. The challenge for digital publishers is deciding the best platform to present content bearing in mind how users’ habits have changed. There used to be a time not so long ago where the media and the general public were both figuring out the internet. Online became a new place where physical, printed media was replicated onto the world wide web. This was how traditional publishers could tap into their readers’ initial new habits by providing their content online. Very quickly, these now online publishers realized that their traditional readers were evolving. Over the years, as physical turned digital, readers became website visitors. With the advent of new ways to engage their audience, these visitors then became users.