Scrolling, UX myths and context
— by Tina Ličková
The longer I work in design and UX, the more I become convinced there are no universal truths. The context, situation, product or the character of the service you are selling always matter.
One of my favourite sites on UX is UX myths: it disproves old, obsolete, or, by contrast, current myths on how people act on the internet. I often send links to specific articles in this blog to our clients, when we cannot agree on something or we are just confused. Such myths are often based on research information taken out of context or based on badly designed research or poorly developed products.
Information taken out of context
The first case represents the old notion that “people do not scroll”. You regard it as a pure fact because you have read it somewhere once upon a time and stick with it. Well, sure, people do not scroll if there is nothing to scroll for; if they do not understand there is some content on the website or the information the website offers is dull or useless — they just do not scroll. The information that “people do not scroll” is taken out of the context of some article, but with no reasoning as to why.
Badly designed research
Then there is badly designed research. The fact is that people say one thing and do another. Nielsen also blogged about it. I am not implying you are supposed to ignore people’s opinion, however, asking them what they would like to do and really do are two damn different things. When mentioning scrolling, I remember one example from testing, where one lady kept complaining that she needs to scroll but, at the same time, continued scrolling like mad. She completed all the tasks (one of them was placing a hardware order in an e-shop), and she was even delighted because the phone she has liked had a reduced price in the e-shop. In fact, when you ask people whether they mind scrolling, most do not care. Moreover, someone might say: “no way”. Always check if they would actually (not) scroll in user tests, as in A/B tests, heat maps, recordings of their behaviour on the web, and so on. It is just like in real life: believe in what people actually do, not what they say they do.
Poorly designed products
Last (but) not least, there are poorly designed products: webs, applications, etc. If the website loads slowly, pictures do not display, or the information you offer is worthless and useless, then it is true that people do not scroll.
Here are typical reactions to excessive scrolling which lack proper information:
- “It is totally useless here.”
- “I do not get what it has to do with what I need to know in order to buy it.”
- “How does it work? I do not get it at all; I just know it is great … however, I do not trust it because I have no idea how it works.”
If you, for example, fail to explain how your product works or its pricing and you just overload people with a long list of benefits, information about your team, or other irrelevant information in the context of what users are looking for, then they will be unwilling to scroll for more information. If you offer the information in the wrong place, and it is the place where users expect quick and clear information, and you put long texts there instead, users will refuse to scrol, telling you: “It is too long, I am lazy to read it.”
Mistrust myths. Consider the context
Quality research helps you design a good website and protects you from slipping. I intentionally say good and not excellent, because an excellent site requires a lot of time, optimisation, testing and looking for the context of what you are saying and selling. Every truth somebody discovers about how people behave on the internet is just a hypothesis. Understanding that the internet in its present form has been here for just about 20 years can lead us to the realisation that we are just at the beginning of figuring out what works. Our habits in using it change as quickly as the technologies themselves. Some remain unchanged; some have been getting established as standards in the past years or months. Your digital product does not end its path when you place in on the web. Ironically, this is the moment when you need to pull up your sleeves a bit higher and start checking if what you have put on the internet brings value in the context of what your users and customers need.
