website pages

[lukoot]

is it better to have more pages on your website or more content per page ?
for example if i have quite a long web page with different information on it
would it be better if i split the information onto two pages

[dazman10]

It really depends on the information. If the information is just text, then you will be ok with fewer pages, since the download speed of text is very short. But then you need to consider that the user may be put off by seeing one large block of text, so might not actually read as much as they would if the info was over several pages.

Alternatively, if you have, say, a gallery of thumbnails of photos you have taken, then you would be best off splitting that over several pages, since the thumbnails will take longer to download, and you don't want the user to be waiting around downloading loads of images when they only might want one, which they could get to by going to the specific page it is on.

[farscapeone]

There is a rule for that in web design. It says that the bottom of the page should be reachable after tree mouse wheel scrolls. That's why people invented pagination Why do you thing google displays only 10 results per page by default?

[essellar]

That particular rule of thumb is mostly wrong. If the data segments are chunked (separate articles/entries/sections) then it's a good rule to follow (and may actually encourage pages that have too much stuff "below the fold") but for anything that's text-heavy and continuous, it's just annoying.

"Expert users" (people who are aware of the option) will almost always look for the "printer friendly" version of the page so they don't have to put up with pagination (and will probably have a Readability plugin installed in the browser to make the line-lengths, fonts, colours and text size actually useful to them). Chapter- or section-length bites are almost always preferable for long text -- the load time between chapters (or sections that would deserve their own subheadings) is a natural interruption in reading flow; arbitrary pagination introduces interruptions that hinder reading flow. (Actual usability tests can make a difference in one's assumptions. I don't have the fancy eye-tracking cameras handy, but I've used the Norman-Neilsen methodology enough to have changed my mind about a number of things over the years.)

By the way, if you do have long text on your site, it might be a good idea to gently remind users that the space bar will do a "page down" for them in most browsers so they don't waste their lives monkeying with scroll wheels/scroll bars/arrow keys.

[lukoot]

some interesting points thanks to all that have replied
one other thing i was thinking about is links and how many would be reasonable ?
what i mean is from a page on a website that links to another page on the same site then another then another but all relevant to each other would people think oh another link to another page and get bored and give up before they got to the end because at some point i know i have done that before but maybe it was because i tired of the content i was reading im not sure

[essellar]

Links to relevant topics are a Good Thing (TM). Just make sure they are segregated from the main content and well labelled -- and make sure that there's a difference between visited and unvisited links (that is, don't use CSS to make them look the same) and that the URLs to the pages are consistent so that the user won't see the same content over and over again unless they want to. How many is too many? Try to keep it to a dozen or fewer if you can, preferably a "top five", but provide a link to an index page (and label it "more like this" or some such) or use a collapsible <div> that the user can click to open. Breadcrumbs will provide a redundant method of getting to relevant content as well (the user can go up a level and stay in category).

You're right, though -- I've been to a number of sites over the years that had navigation that I'm absolutely sure was designed by the same people who make those automated telephone "service" systems. You know, the one where you go through fourteen levels of menus, pressing 2 or 5 or 7, only to find yourself back at the start menu yet again without ever finding anything useful along the way and then, knowing the futility in store but hoping for some justice in the universe, you start off on the voyage once again, finally hitting zero and holding on for two hours for a human to answer.