Scrolling is an essential user action in almost every website or app design pattern. But not all scrolls have to be boring. More designers are opting for unique scrolling patterns that encourage engagement and drive user actions.
Here, we’re going to dive into scroll actions that are worth trying, what makes them work and why the scroll is an effective design tool. (Note to readers: You need to click on the example links in the post to really get a feel for how the scrolling actions feel. Spend some time playing with each of the websites, and you are sure to find some design inspiration!)
Return of the Scroll
It wasn’t that long ago that some designers declared the website scroll dead. But those prophecies did not hold true. Thanks to smaller devices, the scroll became more necessary. (How would you put everything on a single phone “screen?”)
The new philosophy is pretty simple: The smaller the screen, the longer the scroll. And that longer scroll concept has carried over to all devices.
The other consideration when it comes to the scroll is access to high speed internet connections for more users. Faster connections make more elements and larger pages load quicker and with ease. It’s not something you always think about first when you are working with scrolling, but is a key consideration.
even busted the idea that users don’t scroll with some hard research. Here’s the most eye-opening fact: “Chartbeat, a data analytics provider, analyzed data from 2 billion visits and found that “66% of attention on a normal media page is spent below the fold.” There’s plenty of other data too, if that’s not enough to make you think about designing for scroll actions.
And thanks great techniques – from parallax to storytelling to animation – the scroll can be a designer’s best friend and an effective tool.
Pros and Cons of Scrolling
While scrolling can be an effective tool for generating user conversation and engagement, it needs to be done with care. A never-ending scroll with no purpose can actually have a negative impact on users.
It’s important to weigh the pros and cons of scroll actions based on your design goals and messaging before starting a project. Like any other design technique, the scroll works best in some situations and for other projects other actions might be more desirable.
3 Reasons to Scroll
It encourages user interaction because of motion and movement. Parallax scrolling actions are one way to create this type of engaging content that drives users to keep flicking the mouse or screen.
It provides immediate gratification for content seekers. With a longer scroll, more content is on a single page so users can find everything they need efficiently and without hopping around multiple pages.
It’s intuitive. Scrolling is a pretty natural gesture on touch-based devices (which are constantly growing in number), and users don’t really have to think about how to use it. The pattern is becoming widely accepted among all users, regardless of age or device.
3 Reasons Not to Scroll
It can complicate design because you have to create intentional linkages to keep users moving through the design.
Large pages with lots of animation or effects can slow down the design. Some techniques might not work on mobile and you might have to consider multiple patterns in the responsive framework.
Navigational challenges can pop up with long page outlines. Consider a sticky header or footer so that users can always go back to other parts of the design and avoid getting “lost.”
Vertical Scrolling
Long vertical scrolling is the most common type of scroll action. It works best when there’s a lot of content to populate (think Facebook or Twitter) and users won’t necessarily need to return to the top frequently.
Vertical scrolling is also the most natural scrolling pattern with users moving from the top to the bottom of a page. To make sure users engage with the scroll, include a visual cue at the bottom of the first page to help encourage the action if the design doesn’t make it immediately clear.
Certain types of content work best in this format as well, such as blogs or other information that will change or is subject to frequent updates. Infographics and long-form narrative pieces can also benefit from vertical scrolling pattern.
Vertical scrolling is also great for websites that get a significant percentage of traffic from mobile users. (You’ll have to check your analytics to see how users are accessing your website.) A significant percentage would be that most users (at least 51 percent) use the design on a mobile device. Tablet interactions don’t typically count in the mobile category because of the significantly larger screen size.
Horizontal Scrolling
Horizontal scrolling is not as common but growing in popularity. The concept borrows from the idea of a slider, with panels that move from left to right (or right to left).
This scroll action is a fun alternative on desktop and tablet screens, but can sometimes be a little awkward on smaller, mobile devices because it is often tailored to horizontally-oriented content.
The key to making a horizontal scroll work is that you have to let users know it exists and show them how to use it. This can be as simple as small arrows on the sides of the screen to indicate an action, a scrolling progress bar at the bottom of the screen or a text indication to “scroll here.”
Because the user pattern is less common, it’s important to track website analytics to determine the effectiveness of the technique. Some user bases will adopt the pattern immediately, but others might have some resistance.
Scrolling as a Game
Scrolling doesn’t have to be boring. Try a game to keep users interested while increasing time on site. You can design an actual game for users or create a visual pattern that’s so much fun, users are delighted by the experience and just want to see more.
We3 turns the content into a choose-your-own-adventure style game. Users have to make choices using click and scroll actions. This type of design is complex but when done well can keep users interacting with the site for extended periods of time.
Stink Studios is a great example of the latter. The design uses multiple bit of content in creative, colored blocks that populate on the scroll. The animations are on point, the content type (portfolio) works with the technique and the design demands continued scrolling thanks to the way elements break on the screen.
Scrolling with Other Actions
You don’t have to stick to one type of scrolling pattern – mix it up and incorporate vertical and horizontal scrolling. But be warned – this is a very tricky thing to pull off effectively. Powerleau uses this very mix to take users through lots of different types of content. It works thanks to plenty of navigational tool with arrows indicating a horizontal scroll (which includes more content in a display format) and the more common vertical scroll that includes information that would otherwise be clicked on from the hidden menu.
Scrolling can do other things as well, such as pan and zoom information on the screen. Uber uses this type of concept with its actual website. What’s interesting about the design concept is that scroll actions on the desktop website mirror zoom actions in the app. (Pretty cool, huh?)
Finally, some scroll actions might not appear to be actions at all. With the magic of parallax and great animated flow and color choices, Pumperl gsund uses scroll to create an almost video style display of a product. Moving the mouse spins the product (in time with mouse speed, no less), adds content and give the user plenty of information about what might otherwise be a too simple, colorless project.
Conclusion
Here’s one more fact from UX Myths: “The design agency Huge measured scrolling in a series of usability tests and found ‘that participants almost always scrolled, regardless of how they are cued to do so – and that’s liberating.’”
That alone should be enough to make you consider a scrolling format. If it’s not, think about usability, creativity and overall function. Users do understand the scroll. They will try to do it. Shouldn’t your designs reward them for interaction?
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Great read, Carrie.
As you’ve mentioned, scrolling does increase the user’s interaction with your website, but if you have long page outlines it can be daunting.
That again was no use: he but got another smile and a friendly look of the sort he no longer wanted. I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn, and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now remounting, both of them openly in tears. "Hello, Kendall." We have this great advantage in dealing with Plato—that his philosophical writings have come down to us entire, while the thinkers who preceded him are known only through fragments and second-hand reports. Nor is the difference merely accidental. Plato was the creator of speculative literature, properly so called: he was the first and also the greatest artist that ever clothed abstract thought in language of appropriate majesty and splendour; and it is probably to their beauty of form that we owe the preservation of his writings. Rather unfortunately, however, along with the genuine works of the master, a certain number of pieces have been handed down to us under his name, of which some are almost universally admitted to be spurious, while the authenticity of others is a question on which the best scholars are still divided. In the absence of any very cogent external evidence, an immense amount of industry and learning has been expended on this subject, and the arguments employed on both sides sometimes make us doubt whether the reasoning powers of philologists are better developed than, according to Plato, were those of mathematicians in his time. The176 two extreme positions are occupied by Grote, who accepts the whole Alexandrian canon, and Krohn, who admits nothing but the Republic;115 while much more serious critics, such as Schaarschmidt, reject along with a mass of worthless compositions several Dialogues almost equal in interest and importance to those whose authenticity has never been doubted. The great historian of Greece seems to have been rather undiscriminating both in his scepticism and in his belief; and the exclusive importance which he attributed to contemporary testimony, or to what passed for such with him, may have unduly biassed his judgment in both directions. As it happens, the authority of the canon is much weaker than Grote imagined; but even granting his extreme contention, our view of Plato’s philosophy would not be seriously affected by it, for the pieces which are rejected by all other critics have no speculative importance whatever. The case would be far different were we to agree with those who impugn the genuineness of the Parmenides, the Sophist, the Statesman, the Philêbus, and the Laws; for these compositions mark a new departure in Platonism amounting to a complete transformation of its fundamental principles, which indeed is one of the reasons why their authenticity has been denied. Apart, however, from the numerous evidences of Platonic authorship furnished by the Dialogues themselves, as well as by the indirect references to them in Aristotle’s writings, it seems utterly incredible that a thinker scarcely, if at all, inferior to the master himself—as the supposed imitator must assuredly have been—should have consented to let his reasonings pass current under a false name, and that, too, the name of one whose teaching he in some respects controverted; while there is a further difficulty in assuming that his existence could pass unnoticed at a period marked by intense literary and philosophical activity. Readers who177 wish for fuller information on the subject will find in Zeller’s pages a careful and lucid digest of the whole controversy leading to a moderately conservative conclusion. Others will doubtless be content to accept Prof. Jowett’s verdict, that ‘on the whole not a sixteenth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy.’116 To which we may add that the Platonic dialogues, whether the work of one or more hands, and however widely differing among themselves, together represent a single phase of thought, and are appropriately studied as a connected series. Before entering on our task, one more difficulty remains to be noticed. Plato, although the greatest master of prose composition that ever lived, and for his time a remarkably voluminous author, cherished a strong dislike for books, and even affected to regret that the art of writing had ever been invented. A man, he said, might amuse himself by putting down his ideas on paper, and might even find written178 memoranda useful for private reference, but the only instruction worth speaking of was conveyed by oral communication, which made it possible for objections unforeseen by the teacher to be freely urged and answered.117 Such had been the method of Socrates, and such was doubtless the practice of Plato himself whenever it was possible for him to set forth his philosophy by word of mouth. It has been supposed, for this reason, that the great writer did not take his own books in earnest, and wished them to be regarded as no more than the elegant recreations of a leisure hour, while his deeper and more serious thoughts were reserved for lectures and conversations, of which, beyond a few allusions in Aristotle, every record has perished. That such, however, was not the case, may be easily shown. In the first place it is evident, from the extreme pains taken by Plato to throw his philosophical expositions into conversational form, that he did not despair of providing a literary substitute for spoken dialogue. Secondly, it is a strong confirmation of this theory that Aristotle, a personal friend and pupil of Plato during many years, should so frequently refer to the Dialogues as authoritative evidences of his master’s opinions on the most important topics. And, lastly, if it can be shown that the documents in question do actually embody a comprehensive and connected view of life and of the world, we shall feel satisfied that the oral teaching of Plato, had it been preserved, would not modify in any material degree the impression conveyed by his written compositions. breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five The bargaining was interminable, something in this manner:— Then follows a long discussion in Hindi with the bystanders, who always escort a foreigner in a mob, ending in the question— There was a bright I. D. blanket spread on the ground a little way back from the fire, and she threw herself down upon it. All that was picturesque in his memories of history flashed back to Cairness, as he took his place beside Landor on the log and looked at her. Boadicea might have sat so in the depths of the Icenean forests, in the light of the torches of the Druids. So the Babylonian queen might have rested in the midst of her victorious armies, or she of Palmyra, after the lion hunt in the deserts of Syria. Her eyes, red lighted beneath the shadowing lashes, met his. Then she glanced away into the blackness of the pine forest, and calling her dog to lie down beside her, stroked its silky red head. The retreat was made, and the men found themselves again in the morning on the bleak, black heath of Drummossie, hungry and worn out, yet in expectation of a battle. There was yet time to do the only wise thing—retreat into the mountains, and depend upon a guerilla warfare, in which they would have the decided advantage. Lord George Murray now earnestly proposed this, but in vain. Sir Thomas Sheridan and other officers from France grew outrageous at that proposal, contending that they could easily beat the English, as they had done at Prestonpans and Falkirk—forgetting that the Highlanders then were full of vigour and spirit. Unfortunately, Charles listened to this foolish reasoning, and the fatal die was cast. "They said they were going for our breakfast," said Harry. "And I hope it's true, for I'm hungrier'n a rip-saw. But I could put off breakfast for awhile, if they'd only bring us our guns. I hope they'll be nice Springfield rifles that'll kill a man at a mile." "Dod durn it," blubbered Pete, "I ain't cryin' bekase Pm skeered. I'm cryin' bekase I'm afeared you'll lose me. I know durned well you'll lose me yit, with all this foolin' around." He came nearly every night. If she was not at the gate he would whistle a few bars of "Rio Bay," and she would steal out as soon as she could do so without rousing suspicion. Boarzell became theirs, their accomplice in some subtle, beautiful way. There was a little hollow on the western slope where they would crouch together and sniff the apricot scent of the gorse, which was ever afterwards to be the remembrancer of their love, and watch the farmhouse lights at Castweasel gleam and gutter beside Ramstile woods. "Yes, De Boteler," continued the lady, "I will write to him, and try to soothe his humour. You think it a humiliation—I would humble myself to the meanest serf that tills your land, could I learn the fate of my child. The abbot may have power to draw from this monk what he would conceal from us; I will at least make the experiment." The lady then, though much against De Boteler's wish, penned an epistle to the abbot, in which concession and apologies were made, and a strong invitation conveyed, that he would honour Sudley castle by his presence. The parchment was then folded, and dispatched to the abbot. "A very pretty method, truly! You know not the miners and forgers of Dean Forest!—why I would stake a noble to a silver-penny, that if you had discovered he was hidden there, and legally demanded him, he would be popped down in a bucket, to the bottom of some mine, where, even the art of Master Calverley could not have dragged him to the light of day until the Forest was clear of the pack:—but, however, to speak to the point," perceiving that the steward's patience was well nigh exhausted—"I saw Stephen Holgrave yesterday, in the Forest." HoME欧美一级 片a高清
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Great read, Carrie.
As you’ve mentioned, scrolling does increase the user’s interaction with your website, but if you have long page outlines it can be daunting.