A shopper in Example Sneaker Store is scrolling the Everyday list, looking for a commuting shoe. After a screen or two of results, the page has to decide what happens next. It can offer numbered pages, a Load More button, or keep adding products as they scroll.
That last option, endless automatic loading, takes the decision away from the visitor. Choose numbered pages or Load More for the list, so visitors decide when to load more items.
The product lists below are fictional teaching inputs. They are not test results or claims about a real store.
Let Visitors Control When More Loads
Let visitors control when more loads. Choose pages or a Load More button. Do not make endless automatic loading the default.
Pagination divides a list into numbered pages the visitor can move between. A Load More button keeps the items already on the screen and adds the next batch when the visitor asks. Endless automatic loading, sometimes called infinite scroll, adds more items as the visitor approaches the bottom, without a request.
The recommendation is about control, not about offering a switch between all three patterns. Nielsen Norman Group describes a Load More button as especially helpful when visitors have control over how much content is loaded, and as especially useful for shoppers on a phone, who may be on a limited data plan. GOV.UK’s pagination guidance tells teams to avoid automatically loading content when the visitor approaches the bottom of the page, because that causes problems for keyboard users.
Both pages and Load More can pass the same practical checks: the visitor can tell where they are, return to a useful place in the list, and reach the footer.
This is about how a long list continues, not about the product cards or filters on it. Those are covered in Product Listing Page Best Practices.
Choose for the Content and the Task
There is no single pattern that suits every list. Nielsen Norman Group’s conclusion is that no solution is overall superior. The better starting point depends on what the visitor is trying to do, and on the kind of content.
Use this table as a starting point, then check the behavior on your actual page. It is a decision aid, not a published rule.
| Dominant need | Starting choice to evaluate |
|---|---|
| Move through distinct sets of results, or return to a numbered place in the list | Pagination |
| Browse further while keeping the items already on the screen | Load More |
| Read one continuous article | Keep the article on one page rather than splitting it across pages |
| See the complete set in one view | Consider View All alongside paginated results, when the full list stays practical to use |
Nielsen Norman Group finds endless automatic loading a better fit for homogeneous browsing with no particular goal, such as entertainment, news, or social feeds. It does not recommend that pattern when people need to find something specific, compare items far apart, or inspect only the first few results, or when they are on a slow connection or have accessibility needs.
Catalog size matters too. In Nielsen Norman Group’s guidance on listing pages, very large catalogs should keep numbered pages for precise control. A small or medium-sized catalog can use Load More, and automatic loading can work when the set is limited, filters are clear, and the number of items is visible. Baymard’s ecommerce testing has often favored Load More for category and search lists, and has advised avoiding both traditional pagination and endless scrolling on those product lists. The two views do not always agree. Treat catalog size and the shopper’s task as the reasons to choose, and ask the team to show the behavior rather than appealing to a universal winner.
For linear content, the choice is simpler. Jakob Nielsen’s 2013 guidance on item lists is that an article should almost never be split across pages. Keep a long article together.
Make Returning to the List Work
With either pattern, a shopper who opens a product and comes back should return to a useful place in the list, not to the top of the first screen.
Baymard and Nielsen Norman Group both treat this as a basic expectation. Check it yourself: open a product partway down the list, go Back, and see whether the same items, and the same place in the list, are still there. If the list had already revealed more items, those should still be available.
Describe the problem and the outcome you need. You do not have to diagnose how the return is built.
Once the shopper is on a product page, the next review is whether that page answers the questions that could change the purchase. What Shoppers Need on a Product Page covers that information.
Keep the Footer Within Reach for Mouse and Touch
A footer is often where a visitor looks for contact details, return terms, or legal and privacy routes. What to Put in a Website Footer covers what belongs there. This section is only about whether the visitor can reach it.
Endless automatic loading can keep pushing the footer down as the visitor approaches it. Nielsen Norman Group notes that this pattern can make it impossible to access the footer. In Baymard’s tests, the footer appeared for a second or two and was then pushed out of reach, and on a phone it made footer links inaccessible to the people in the test.
That problem affects people scrolling with a mouse or by touch. It is not a claim that the footer is unreachable for everyone, and there is no WCAG success criterion that names infinite scroll. GOV.UK separately warns that automatic loading causes problems for keyboard users. If you need to raise a keyboard issue, describe what happened when you tried the page with a keyboard, and ask the team to investigate.
A Load More button, or a move to the next page, gives the visitor a place to stop and reach the footer. When you review the pattern, scroll with the input you are using, such as a mouse or touch, and confirm that you can get to the footer deliberately, without the page adding more content first. Record the view you checked and the input you used. A phone-sized window scrolled with a mouse is not the same as a check on a real phone.
Offer View All Only Where It Helps
A paginated list can also offer a View All option, so a visitor who wants the complete set can open it in one view. Jakob Nielsen described this combination in 2013: pagination as the default, with View All as an option. He suggested an upper limit of about 100 items for View All. The same article notes that most people do not customize a view, and that extra choices can add their own problems.
Treat View All as an option for a list that stays practical to load and use, not as a required companion to every set of pages, and not as a switch between pagination, Load More, and automatic loading.
Check Loading, Returning, and Footer Access
On the actual list, at phone, tablet, and desktop widths, walk through these checks. These checks matter at a narrow width as well as a wide one: a footer or a next-page control can be easy to reach on a desktop view and hard to reach when the list is longer on a phone.
- Load the next batch or move to the next page. Check whether your location and the availability of more items are clear.
- Open a product partway down the list. Go Back. Check whether you return to the same place.
- Find the Load More button or the page numbers again without starting over.
- Try to reach the footer with a mouse or by touch. Check whether more content loads before you can reach it.
Include the page address, the width you checked, the pattern in use, and a screenshot with your note. A useful note could say:
On the Everyday listing at [page address], checked at [width × height] with a mouse, new products keep loading as I approach the bottom, and the footer moves out of reach. Please use a Load More button or numbered pages so a shopper can decide when more loads and can still reach the footer.
If you also checked the same page by touch on a real phone, send that as a separate observation.
Ask for a change when the visitor cannot control when more appears, cannot return to a useful place, or cannot reach the end of the page on purpose.
