Website pagination: Stories should load into a single page every time

I don’t disagree that these are nice benefits from pagination. But I think that thoughtful design can improve how long articles look on the Web. One example of this is the Verge, which publishes very long pieces every day and makes them look stunning and manageable without page breaks. In its long pieces, the Verge breaks up blocks of text with photos and design elements like pull-quotes, and each article has internal navigation buttons that let you go to specific sections of the piece. (In this review of the new Kindle, for instance, you can click on “Hardware” or “Software, battery” to scroll directly to those topics.)

I asked Joshua Topolsky, the Verge’s editor, whether he had a hard time convincing the advertising sales department at the magazine to ditch pages. He said he didn’t: “From the beginning, there’s been a company-wide belief that we can marry great advertising with great content and not have to cheat or trick our users,” Topolsky emailed. “And so far, that’s proven 100 percent correct. Our traffic has been on a big climb, and I believe advertisers are really beginning to see the true value in engaged users who care (and return) versus sheer volume of pageviews (though our pageviews have also been through the roof).”

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