2

I am working on a search page design for an e-commerce website. I cam across these solutions while searching on the internet

iPhone & Mobile Web: Pagination vs. Load more vs. Scrolling

I am having a block ahead in the discussion for using the methods for pagination

If I use 1st option there is just too much data to load. If I use 2nd options I won't be able to facilitate the user to jump to page 'n' for revisiting a product. If I use 3rd option I will face same problem as #2. It would be really hard for the user to reach the footer links. ( Issue with all the auto loaders. )

Hence I am looking for a good mix of #2 & #3.. but instead of Previous next first and last links I would like to give jump to Page Number. Please suggest if there are any better solutions?

3 Answers 3

3

I think it is important to differentiate what kind of data you're working with and how often it is expected users will need to load more data. Jeff Atwood did a good job explaining the root issue.

Once you have thousands of items, you don't have a pagination problem. You have a search and filtering problem.

When the problem of too much data is left unsolved, the users are given the problem of making sense of the data. A study by Chitika on Google results gave some insights on the correlation between ranking and traffic.

The first result received 32.5% of traffic. The second result received 17.6% of traffic. By the 12th result the average traffic share was less than 1%.

Part of this should recognize that the first result may be exactly what the user was looking for, but we should also recognize the case where a user "gives up" after trying the first 10 links.

Without knowing the domain data and your constraints, here are some recommendations:

  • Consider improving the search results, either by a recommendation engine or some sort of filtering.
  • Consider a feature for the recently viewed products if this is an important use case. If it is required to reach the footer links, then you can't use auto loaders and are left with choosing the 3rd option.
  • Consider adding tracking to see how often users end up going down deeper in the search results. Using that data will help drive future direction for the search functionality.
1
  • Pretty close to my conclusion, I am also consider adding shortlisting feature as Babossa suggested. Thanks for the insights and the links :)
    – Vatsal
    May 23, 2014 at 5:15
0

I normally use option #4 as I rarely use footers for mobile. What kind of links do you have in the footer, could they go in another place? If you do have a footer that you want to be accessible I would use option #3.

If the search puts the most relevant results at the top I don't see the point of using page numbers since you'd probably find better results on page 2 rather than page 3, unless you sort by price and want to jump several pages.

Try prototyping the different options and test what works best.

0

"Jump to page" feature is rarely useful since it's very hard for the user to know which page to jump to. The user might try and remember which page an item he/she wants to return to was in, but in this case, a shortlist feature would be much easier to operate.

I think Jonathan's answer makes a lot of sense; solve the issue elsewhere if the users frequently end up with an overwhelming amount of search hits.

Solution 4 is the one that I find most appealing. But, while scrolling IS fun, waiting is not. So if you can use tracking to find a good breakpoint so that most users never have to wait for the second batch it would make the experience way better. I mean, it doesn't have to be 20 hits in the first load, it could be 15, or 35.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.