People are OK with scrolling. They even expect it!

January 11, 2012

We often get clients who ask for a site ‘not to scroll’.

This is why we or any other web designer would not recommend doing this.

1. Users expect to scroll

Yes, back in the olden days (the 90’s) people had quite the bugbear about scrolling (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html) but almost 20 years on, the attitudes are totally different. Scrolling through a product catalogue of your favourite fashion chain is as natural as thumbing through the items on a sale rail. Just because you personally don’t like it doesn’t mean the majority of users have a huge problem with it. And remember. Your website is used by your users, not you.

2. Designing for one screen size is wrong

Some users have tiny screens on notebooks. Some users have titanic LCD screens. By forcing your designer to not have scrolling you are forcing them to design purely for the smallest screen size which means that only those with small screens get the best benefit from your site which is a very small percentage and ruins your website for those with anything larger (which is the vast majority of users).

3. Scrolling down a website is like turning pages in a book

Ever heard of someone complain about turning the pages in their book? Me neither. We understand that scrolling hundreds of pages worth of content is a chore and not right but a minimal scroll is not an exertion that we shouldn’t expect of users. The only alternative would be to separate the content on different pages which would mean they would have to click-through instead which is far worse.

Please remember that scrollbars are not the enemy.

Forcing your designers and developers to cram everything into a non-scrollable area is both outdated and extra work that isn’t needed.

Making your content important enough for people to want to scroll down is the key.