At this point, any given Los Angeles web design company should have continuously-scrolling pages in their portfolio. But prospective clients for such a company might want to ask whether it is the only thing in their portfolio.
Continuous scroll – the practice of having additional content pre-load as you move down a page – began to become really popular around the time mobile devices overtook computers as means of accessing the web. It’s a convenient way for a web design company to let mobile users access a wealth of content without cramming it into tiny spaces or forcing them to load a large number of pages.
But as practical as this feature is, it isn’t always the best option. In fact, people who still access a client’s site by computer may find it annoying. Some news sites employ continuous scroll on both their desktop and their mobile versions. On a phone or tablet, this prompts users to essentially “turn the page” to another article after reading one. On a computer, it may force a user to scroll back up after an unwanted article loaded automatically and caused the scroll bar to jump down a page that is now twice as long.
There are at least two questions that a web design company and its client should consider when thinking about continuous scroll. One is the type of device that most of the site’s visitors are likely to be using. The other is whether the onsite content is the sort of thing that warrants pre-loading. It’s perfectly appropriate to isolate content on pages of finite length, especially if there’s no compelling reason why a user should go from one piece of content straight to another.
It’s not uncommon for a web design company to take continuous scroll for granted. But neither its newness nor its popularity are really grounds for assuming that it’s the right feature on any given page. In fact, clients and contractors should avoid taking anything for granted. Instead, both parties should always be open to conversation about basic design elements, to make sure everything serves its intended purpose.
