Why Didn’t I Build an Infinite Scroll?

I’m sure I’m going to get that question, so I’m preemptively answering it. I may still go with a flat color palette yet, but I’m still not sure that’s going to convince you I know what i’m talking about, and two, it’s a fad and I hate fads. You’re always chasing them down the road.

I have a few sites that are done in the cubes and one page style, and they don’t rank. Part of my goal in revamping this site was to take it and get it fixed up. It’s been a diamond in the rough for years. So with the upcoming mobiapocalypse on its way, I thought no time like the present. Plus, with WordPress I can change how the site looks almost hourly once I get it all built out.

I have looked at the infinite scroll-type sites. I think the verdict is still out on those, as is the flat color. How does the user interact with a website I think is a very important thing, and so far the infinite scroll, flat color sites ain’t doing so good. I know places like Mashable have gone to that format. It makes sense for a site like Mashable. I am not sure it make sense for an engineering firm, and surely not a web hosting company. I went to HostGator tonight to answer questions for someone, and you know its just plain hard to find anything, but it scrolls real nice. Sorry HostGator.

But more important, you know who really doesn’t like infinite scroll sites…yep, Google. They don’t know what to do with them really. They are trying to force everyone into revealing their Javascript so they can get an idea of what a site is about. And in part I think this is why this new edict of making sure you didn’t hide you Javascript is going on.  And for me, I don’t know if I see enough of a benefit to clients to go down the cool road only to have the site not rank, Google not understand it, and most of all not convert it well. And does it really make a better user experience? After a while I would think my hand would get tired of scrolling if the site is big enough. Our Vertical Web.com site is over 200 pages.  So you have to pick and choose, and so far I’m not seeing a lot of good reasons to embark on this. I do have a few folks that are here with us for non-SEO type things, and they have now asked for SEO type things, and the first thing I said is I don’t think Google is going to like this one-page web design idea so much.

Google has asked that if you must embark on the infinite scroll to use pagination and lay the site out in a way that makes sense, sorta what they ask all sites to do. I just don’t know that if your not CNN, Mashable or the Huffington Post, it makes a lot of sense to do that extra work. Mashable has the staff to make sure this is all coded right and to double and triple check its rankings, its pages, and so on. Sure Google might come around and get it all perfect, but by then we’ll all be on to the next cool thing to chase down the road.

Most concerning is that business sites are not converting as well using this design concept. Again, the designers are often art-type folks that like to be creative but leave the ‘marketing’ to the tech-type folks. As long as it’s pretty. For me, I can make a few tweaks on things and increase conversion by 20 percent, or i can go down the unrest cool road and tank conversions. It’s all just common sense, and really psychology.  And while we are on the subject. Everyone loves slides, loves them. But do you know a website with movement converts at a significantly lower rate? Have a great Monday!