Usability of an endless/infinite scroll

Question

What are pros and cons of this technique (see Softfolio for an example). Two things I personally thought of are as follows:

• Impossible to tell someone where an item of interest is located (like, you probably won't say "324-th row, second column")
• Broken navigation when you return back to an infinitely scrolled page.

What else can you think of? And what do you personally think of this approach in general. Would you use this in you projects?

Answer 1

I agree this is a mess. If there is a finite list, there should be some kind of pagination mechanism that lets you know where you are.

Alternatively, or in addition, add a filtering mechanism so you can weed out the stuff you don't want to see.

SO provides a handy example of how to do it right.

Answer 2

Etsy discovered the hard way that infinite scroll isn't good for conversions. Recommend reading this article.

Answer 3

I wouldn't use infinite scroll on search results. But it's really nice for casual browsing, or in a random output situation such as psychological test where it's important that items not show up in a constant order. Something like a market preference survey skews towards early choices, so randomizing the order of options is essential.

Where it gets frustrating is when the user leaves a page via a link and then wants to come back. For a browsing situation, I'd probably address that with overlays rather than linking away.

Answer 4

I think it is "neat" but requires more visual clues as to what is going on... and in many circumstances isn't what the user wants.

• If I want to get to "page 7 of the results" I don't want to move to the end of the page 6 times to trigger the reload of additional data. (e.g. in an alphabetical list... If I want "M"'s, don't make me wade through a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l
• Ensure there is a visual clue of more loading if you do use this (when I press CTRL+END I expect to be at the bottom)
• I often find I'm still waiting on these types of pages because the "loading" of the next set of results waits until I'm very near the bottom... thus I often get there before the data is loaded/ready/rendered
• (pro) I think this kind of thing would be good for certain scenarios... e.g. when I scroll down my Twitter list... I don't want a "more" button, just load it...
• I would prefer better "search" filtering over fancy ajax-infinite scroll results. If I can filter down to 25 results that actually match what I want, then I won't need to scroll!

Answer 5

Personally I HATE that example. It makes the site much less usable than if the results were paged.

You're right too, when you hit back, you will have to page by scrolling down again, and while page down works it doesnt work well - I cant remember how many page downs i pressed to get to the site, secondly, what if the ordering changes the number of scrolls would differ anyway - I know paging would too, however its much easier to scan a few pages than keep scrolling.

Lastly, even though I am a developer I scrolled down, and the first few times I actually thought maybe if i leave it long enough it will download all the images/samples...then scrolled down and again the same thing happened AAAAAARG!

I would NEVER use this approach in projects.

Answer 6

Actually, It doesn't matter whether we (designers/developers) like it or not. The only thing that matters is the users perception of this. If the user finds it useful, well, then the solution is OK. If the user gets confused and can't accomplish the primary task, then redesign...