Scroll forever – infinite scroll

Infinite scroll is a technology that we have become accustomed to through mobile phones and feeds such as Facebook. The technology means that when you scroll down, it is filled with more data – often on social media it never ends. You can continue down forever. You can continue down forever. We can scroll forever!

It’s rarely like that on a regular website, sooner or later it runs out of content. But the basics of how it works can be used. Instead of the user clicking on “next page”, you can add more when the visitor scrolls down. It becomes convenient for the visitor and you never have to change the URL.

There are several plugins that can be used to achieve this. They add a javascript that simulates a click on the next button when the visitor has reached the end of the page. Then the script fetches the next batch of records and inserts them via a technique called ajax.

One of them you can use is Catch Infinite scroll

And it depends on the theme which one works best.

Disadvantages of infinite scrolling

One of the most obvious disadvantages is that the visitor does not reach your footer. If you have a lot of information there, yours will not be shown to your visitors.

There is also a downside to SEO Now the archive pages are rarely the most important for your SEO but it might be worth considering.

The third disadvantage is that it takes a little while to load more content on the page. It depends a bit on the performance of your site and how much to load how negative it is for the visitor.

Alternative to infinite scroll

An alternative to triggering the script when scrolling and instead doing it by making a button. You have probably seen it with a button text such as load more or load next. Then there is the function, but you avoid some of the disadvantages of infinite scrolling.