What Is Better for Superior UX on Drupal websites… Clicking or Scrolling?

Clicking or scrolling has been in debate for long now. With the internet behavior changing in leaps and bounds over the recent years, people prefer one over the other and how! Both the actions are integral to our online usage. However, when we are considering usability, we need to be sure what is better than the other.

What Does Usability Demand?

UX or User Experience is the buzz word today! Everyone wants their website to be user-friendly and high on usability. Everything should be easy to find, easy to read and easy to understand. The latest studies on usability and user experience focuses on how scrolling has become the latest phenomenon to hit web design and development.

“Above the Fold” Syndrome!

If you are designing a Drupal website, it becomes all the more important to establish what is better – Scrolling or Clicking. There was a time when only simple websites where seen everywhere. If there was a big fish in the market, they would clutter their websites with all the information. They would literally add more chaos to “above the fold” section of the website than much below it. Even today, there are many web designers, developers and businesses that focus on crowding the upper half or above the fold of a website to hold the user’s attention.

The main reason behind the practice discussed above is the slow speed internet of that time. A web page took quite a while to load completely. People had to rely on the “above the fold” section to understand what the website was all about or what they could expect from it. Today, most users have a high-speed internet accessibility. Websites do not take a lot of time to load. In fact, in most cases, web pages almost load instantly leaving no room for this syndrome. Scrolling is actually catching on with due credit to high speed internet and quick processors in our PCs.

Scrolling is a Big Hit Now!

Moving from the 90’s to modern internet era, users no longer focus on just the first half of a website. No longer is the “above the fold” section, the most important part of a website. Today, Drupal developers, just like any other designer and developer, are focusing on a website design and structure that is scroll-friendly. Websites that are not cluttered and have ample breathing room are a HIT!

Today users do not mind scrolling a page to find more sections worth reading. Recent researches also talk about how people actually prefer scrolling over clicking. On a personal note, it is easier to scroll (even endlessly!) on a website than click section by section and page by page on a website. If there is a need to understand a website and what all it entails, it is easier to scroll than click along!

And Why Is Scrolling a Big Hit?

How about visiting a Drupal website that has almost everything that you need? It has social media tools, catchy taglines, interesting images and font size, effective calls to action and literally everything that makes a website user-friendly! However, the same website has everything cluttered and stacked into one section. Today, users do not bother about scrolling but intelligent white spaces that help them read through the sections easily. If your call to action is poorly highlighted because of a banner ad or newsletter section stuck right next to it, then probably it will not generate many clicks for you!

Comes Naturally…

We all prefer to scroll these days, don’t we! It comes naturally to us. The best of UX researchers stress that scrolling is second-nature to us. Whereas, clicking is more of a chore! It is easier and simpler to keep moving down the page without having to decide on clicking for a particular page or section.

Users are increasingly becoming fond of scrolling. Even the best of websites are revamping their old net-age look and converting to scroll-friendly websites. The new website design is fine tuned to have large font or content sizes, interesting content and a lot of white space that makes scrolling a pleasure.

With scrolling, one should not be mistaken that it is still important to have important data above the fold. Top of the website continues to be a critical section to catch the attention of the users. Once the visitor is in, we can let them easily move down the page, finding new sections and fragments.

INFINITE SCROLLING

There is a popular form of scrolling that is catching up on the internet. Sites like Facebook and Pinterest use this scrolling to offer a lot of free breathing space and load posts right there for the users. This form of scrolling is known as “infinite scrolling”. The users can continuously browse content by scrolling without having to click on any link. On reaching the bottom of the page, the users find additional content being automatically added to the page and the bottom of the page is pushed downwards. The users keep on browsing fresh content as they move downwards. Newsfeed of Facebook is a classic example of Infinite Scrolling!

Infinite Scrolling on Mobiles

Mobile web has also helped infinite scrolling find more and more takers. The need for continuous browsing of fresh content on mobile has led to the need of stacking up of content to fit the smaller screens of mobile phones.

There are certain criticisms of infinite scrolling that have surfaced recently. Some of these include inability to take the users back to the fresh content in real time. Social media sites have new content in the form of recent posts/ stories added to the website in real time. Users need to scroll back all the way up to read these new stories. Inability to find the footers or use their options/ links is also a concern.

Another example of an exhaustive infinite scrolling drawback is that once users scroll up, they lose the spot that they were presently reading before scrolling up. They have to scroll down and find the particular post or section again. Hence, most websites stay away from infinite scrolling and some use “load more stories” or “load more content” options.

SUMMARY

This discussion clearly highlights the need of doing away with the idea of stuffing the “above-the-fold” section of the websites. More and more impetus needs to be laid on focusing on one content or one theme. Scrolling is by far a great activity for enhancing user experience on a website. It is easier for the users to understand and perceive a message and take an action on it. Therefore, use scrolling over clicking in your next Drupal web design.

If you have any thoughts or comments on the fundamentals of clicking or scrolling or want to tell us what in your opinion is better, than leave us your comments. We would certainly incorporate them in our next post. Till then, stay good!