![]() ![]() This seems to be the biggest complaint of visitors to horizontal websites. There are a lot of things to consider and because it is not what most designers or visitors or used to, you have to plan a lot more than you might with a vertical site. With a horizontal design you definitely want to take the time to plan it out, draw paper prototypes and mock-ups, and figure out where and how everything is going to fit. However, after a while we can get a little lazy and decide just to wing it. Reverse Buro is a great example of a portfolio website that makes use of horizontal scrolling Careful PlanningĪny web designer knows that this is one of the first things you learn about design. Displaying a large catalogue of products or items so that different product categories can be easily shown Displaying discreet sections or slides of information on applications Displaying information in a large visual area that is not easy to see at a glance (e.g. for a photography site or a design portfolio) Holloway makes use of horizontal scrolling to emulate a walk through an art gallery that showcases his creations When Horizontal Scrolling is Great For User ExperienceĪccording to Damian Rees, there are 4 scenarios where horizontal scrolling creates a good user experience: Horizontal scrolling done right – Artist C.L. And how to create great user experience through horizontal scrolling is after all, the objective of this article. For instance, there are some very interesting implementations of horizontal scrolling combined with a parallax effect. On the other hand, horizontal scrolling, done right, can create some interesting user experience. In a recent study, user experience guru Jakob Nielsen has found that only 1% of users view information that was initially hidden because of horizontal scrolling. So how can you do it well? Perhaps one of the most famous examples of a website that was redesigned with horizontal scrolling… MySpace Ask Yourself – Am I Sure That I Want Horizontal Scrolling?Ī statement like this, as the first point in an article that offers best practices about horizontal scrolling seems a bit counter-productive, right? Well, given that horizontal scrolling has been, like I said, a subject of dispute between designers and advocates of user experience, it is more than reasonable that you stop and think if this is the only way that you can take in order to attract user attention. Could it be that because of the swiping movement, users have become more accustomed to horizontal navigation? A well-designed horizontal website can catch people’s attention, cause them to want to look a little longer, and make them remember your site. With the advent of devices such as tablets, the swiping movement has enabled a comeback for horizontal scrolling. Then again, horizontal scrolling has been around since the early days of the internet and occasionally makes a strong comeback – to the point that during these comebacks, horizontally designed websites are for a (brief) period considered as the latest and most modern design layout to have. Horizontal scrolling (aka horizontal navigation) has always been considered as a controversial web design technique and for a long time, it used to be one of the biggest web design faux-pas that a website could make. Attracting Interest Via Horizontal Scrolling You want something that captures your viewers in those first few seconds before they get bored and click away to look at the latest cat video. The question is how?Ī strong, memorable web design is one of the best ways to stand out. However, what is common is that in this extremely competitive platform, that is the web, you want to find a way to make yourself and your business stand out from the rest. It it true that some markets are more competitive and evolve more quickly than others. However, from a seven-year experience that I have in SEO consultancy, I can testify that each market is competitive. Of course, the exact number depends on the industry you are operating in, the targeted users, whether you are targeting users on a regional, national or international basis and other factors. They are trying to attract the same users that you are trying to get … or worse still, they are trying to take a piece of your market or user base. And the reality is that a number of them are competing with your site – trying to penetrate your market or increase their market share … the same market you are operating in. As at October 2013, there are approximately 767 million websites amounting to 3.9 billion web pages.
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