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Keep looking or leave. These are the options awaiting the end of a blog, gallery, search results or any other screen listing information across several pages. We can’t do much to stop a visitor from leaving, so all attention should go into allowing the visitor to move from page to page. However, this weekend I observed my girlfriend having to take a little extra time to focus her cursor onto the ‘Next’ links as she read her favorite blogs. Not that big of a deal, she doesn’t even notice the extra second or so, because all the sites follow a similar design. But multiply this by every day, blog and entry view and the lost time starts to grow. In these moments when we know a visitor is likely to change the page, why are we designing pagination elements that hold them back?

Below is an outline of my thought process while trying to improve pagination based on best practices and an observation.

5 Steps to Better Pagination

Start with your typical pagination element with links for Next, Previous and every page available

At the least we can make the element larger so visitors can more easily acquire the links.

Although the page numbers highlight how much information is available and the visitor’s current position, the vague numbers do little to help a visitor find the content they are looking for. Therefore I would expect the majority of the interaction will be with the Next and Previous links. A little size differentiation helps prioritize the elements.

Seeming a bit exaggerated, I changed the Next and Previous links to buttons to keep the prominence and larger target, while keeping the proportions closer.

Continuing to believe Next and Previous will be accessed much more than the page numbers, why not group them together, making it easier to move back and forth between pages. Considering the typical reading patterns, we’ll group them toward the right of the screen.

And finally, observing the cursor is in the center of the page as the entry is viewed, we can center the Next and Previous buttons above the page numbers. This could potentially land the cursor on, or very near to the Next button without any action from the visitor.

There you have it. A pagination design based on a real user observation that prioritizes the elements based on the most probable user actions. Please add your thoughts and any related personal observations.

Robert Hoekman’s books are inline with Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. They are quick reads that take a simplistic, straightforward, and humorous approach to explaining usability principles.

Designing the Obvious focuses on Robert’s 7 qualities of great web-based software. Explaining how to use each quality to perform ‘Interface Surgery’, as well as changes to the overall usability process, and principles such as kaizen and poka-yoke, the book is great for anyone tasked with creating a pleasant user experience.

Designing the Moment takes a micro-look at different phases of a user experience from searching to sign off and how to make improvements every step of the way. By focusing on each ‘moment’ of the user experience, Robert puts many standard elements of a web experience under inspection and makes some great recommendations.

If you’re looking to give some time to a ‘professional’ book, consider giving one or both of these a shot.

As a new visitor to the Engauge Digital Blog, I decided to start by reading the existing posts in an effort to avoid duplicate discussions. With numerous articles and limited time, my experience consisted of multiple visits where I would read a few articles before having to leave to focus my attention elsewhere. I began each return visit by asking, “Where did I leave off?” The answer would be found after scanning several posts and pages requiring a growing amount of time and effort. I don’t spend much time on blogs, but I have had similar frustrations and thought I would post to see if my experience is common.

THE QUESTION: Has anyone seen a blog that easily allows users to indicate what posts have been read, easily locate unread posts, and search within the posted content?

Indicating where the user is and where they have been in a web experience is a basic best practice, but in my experience it’s commonly void within blogs. The fact that users do not have to select every post prior to viewing does make the typical visited link identification difficult. However the presence of a “Read” check box with every post, an “Unread” filter or category option, and a search field could help answer “Where did I leave off?”