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I've designed a website with a blog section. My mates and I fail to come to an agreement.

My opinion : Left

I think it's better to place it on the left according some studies with heat map and according to the left-to-right reading. When you finish a text line, your eye comes back to the line on the left and find the read more link to access to the whole article.

My mates : right

They usually click on the right to access to the whole article. Why ? I don't know.

Probably linked to the fact that I'm left-handed and my mates ares right-handed ?

Another observation is that the position doesn't matter. In this case we have the read more link on the left (float: left) and the comment link on the right (float: right). It would appear that separating the two links isn't a good idea and it would be better to group both being careful to distinguish the most important "call-to-action" with a different graphic style.

What's your opinion about that?

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    On the left or the right side of what? - L/R of the site? L/R of the article text? L/R of the Menu? Can you show a mockup of which versions you refer to?
    – JonW ♦
    Nov 29, 2013 at 10:09
  • I'd look at what a sample of other sites do and 'go with the standard'. My gut reaction would be bottom right.
    – PhillipW
    Nov 29, 2013 at 10:39
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    Just please don't only rely on the "read more" link. Make the title a link to the article too. Read more links are often harder to "target" with a mouse or a tap than the article's title.
    – Marjan Venema
    Nov 30, 2013 at 19:49

5 Answers 5

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If you consider that users might scan content from left to right in a Z pattern manner, it leads to reason that the reason that the read more link should be at the bottom left as that is an areas users will always see as mentioned in this article

User Will Always Look in the Left-Bottom Part of the Pattern

The designer can be assured that the user will look at a certain part of the content, and he can make use of this information by placing some important call-to-action buttons in this zone

But there are a lot of excellent cases where websites have the read more link on the right hand side as well

So my suggestion it doesn't really matter as long as you follow certain guidelines as given below

  • Make the read more link stand out : Your read more link is technically your call to action and you need to make it stand out against the the rest of the text so that the user needs it. To quote this smashing magazine article

Make Text Links Stand Out

By far the most popular method of presenting “Read more” links is with simple > text. This is usually done with a link that is underlined, bolded, brightly colored and sometimes marked with a > sign. Making text links on your website easily distinguishable from generic links is important and sometimes overlooked by designers.

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  • Use Buttons or icons to draw attention to it : Though this is technically a continuation of the previous point,if your design does not allow distinctive text to make a link stand out, consider using buttons or icons to make them stand out.Here are some examples of how websites have used buttons and icons to make the link stand out.

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Depends on the item you want to provide "More" for... Usually, a block of text (like news, blogs, etc.) and in this case, I'd recommend

Right -- sorry :-(

since then, "More" can be the last word in the text block, which places it exactly where the user's eyes are. So layout and usability converge (I think).

If you are not thinking about text, please give an example. And if you think about more functions (links or buttons), you need to give a complete list since no good design is done bit-wise.

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I always try to avoid using a UI widget if there is a way to directly interact with the content. In the case of an article, I would just show the first few lines of the post, with a progressive fading out of them, so the user can directly interact with the full block of faded excerpt, and at the same time provide something interesting to read and click on.

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There are several strategies you could take

  • "More"(styled) in the bottom-center right below excerpt.
  • "Read more" or "Continue reading" in the bottom-right.

More logical is supposedly "Continue reading".

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I believe the read more link should go directly under the paragraph or excerpt shown prior to the full content being shown.

I feel like The Verge does a pretty good job here..at first you see an excerpt or title and then there's a "See All" call to action button, and then you click it and it takes you to the whole blog post.

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