My site is a content heavy blogging platform/community. I was trying to understand the following two points:
1. How does showing a "Next Story" button to user vs. showing a listing of 3-5 Related Stories compare in terms of user experience and trade offs? The Related Stories alternative will list the recommended stories in a vertical listing and include a story picture, story title, brief excerpt and creator name. This "Related Story" listing as well as next button will be at the bottom of screen and visible when user scrolls down to page bottom.I understand showing "Related Stories" offers more for user to choose from and hence will increase probability of user to click and read more which is the end objective. Is there something else I am missing?
2. If I go through with the relates stories option considering it seems to be used across lot of content sites is there any best practice suggesting how many related stories works best? I understand showing say 3 vs 5 stories may enhance likelihood of showing user something user wants read more of but again more options makes the decision for the user difficult.
Thanks.