Some article websites (I’m looking at msn.com right now, as an example) show the first page or so of article content and then have a “Continue Reading” button, which you must click to see the rest of the article. This seems so ridiculous, from a UX perspective–I know how to scroll down to continue reading, so why hide the text and make me click a button, then have me scroll? Why has this become a fairly common practice?
As both a developer and an end user, this drives me batshit.
Seemingly no one has figured out that if users are bouncing due to page load times, maybe the problem is actually because your page that was supposed to be, say, a recipe for a bologna sandwich doesn’t need to first load an embedded autoplaying video, an external jQuery library, a cookie notice, three time delayed popovers, an embedded tweet, and a sidebar that dynamically loads 20 irrelevant articles, and a 2600x4800 100vw headline image that will scroll up at half speed before the user can even get any of the content into the viewport. Just a thought. I don’t care what your dog-eared copy of Engagement For Dummies says. It is actually wrong.
I have made the business I work for quite successful online by taking all of the alleged “best practices” things that clearly annoy the shit out of everyone, and then just not doing those things.
I miss when browsers used to be fast. Almost every site has perceptible lag now.
I hate with a passion how when looking up recipes, you gotta go through like 5 pages of why they like it, a fluffed up but useless how it’s made, all sorts of other shit, and only then do you get the actual fucking ingredient list and cooking temperatures and the actual cooking instructions.
I HATE IT SO MUCH!
It depends on the site. A recipes site is trying to get as many impressions as possible so they can either turn a profit or keep the lights on.
If your company doesn’t rely on ads to stay afloat, the site experience is better.
If you dislike the page, exit the page within 10ish seconds without clicking anything and you will hurt the page’s SEO ranking.