The ‘scroll of death’ is a favourite critisism of content heavy sites. Certainly in the elearning space the amount of content required to be given to students in courses can result in long scrolling pages - this is as true today as it was ten years ago and it’s not really in question.

What I’d like to think about is whether this is even something we need to worry about in 2024.

The Problem With Scrolling

Long scrolling pages are a problem for certain types of content. If you have a lot of text before the key item on a page, you’re going to introduce frustration on the part of the user, there’s not any debate about that.

What Has Changed?

The Wider Context

Let’s take a step back and look at the overall behaviour of the rest of the web. Infinite scrolling apps and web pages are the norm now. Instagram, TikTok, Threads and even sites favouring the older demographic, dare I say it, like Facebook even, all have a main feed which isn’t paginated. Once you hit the bottom, the next item loads in.

Behavioural Change

The UX of these popular apps, like it or not, sets a certain level of expectation for users when using a website that you’ve designed and created. User behaviour has changed, generally there is an expectation that scrolling is a part of browsing the internet.

Touch Screens

The prevelance of touch screens has also encouranged that change in user behaviour. Now scrolling is not only easy, it’s primary paradigm of human-computer interaction. Mobile OSs are built around it, let alone the web itself - scrolling is inescapeable, and people don’t seem to care.

Other Factors

Other factors that have allowed users to embrace scrolling in web experiences are:

• Internet Connection Speeds have increased over time, meaning pages are more responsive and frustrations are reduced.

• Powerful Devices As connection speeds have increased so has the relative power of the computer that many users are accessing data on, meaning unresponsive behaviour that triggers frustration is also mitigated.

• Users Prefer Scrolling To Clicking There are some UX studies have shown that many users prefer scrolling to clicking between many pages of content.

Conclusion

Scrolling is a weirdly touchy subject with some of the stakeholders in my full time job, but I think at the crux of the issue is user perception. If your end-user is comfortable scrolling to access information, I don’t think there’s any reason to automatically discount a long scroll if it serves your content well.