Websites That Keep You Clicking Are Pure 'Evil'

Farhad Manjoo really, really hates it when websites force you to click through page after page—so much so that, he writes at Slate, he has been forced to divorce his wife and abandon friends over their support for the practice. It's "one of the worst design and usability sins on the Web, the kind of obvious no-no that should have gone out with blinky text, dancing cat animations, and autoplaying music," he notes. It reveals "contempt for people who should be any news site’s highest priority—folks who want to read articles all the way to the end."

So why does it exist? Largely so that sites can squeeze in more ads, Manjoo writes. But that theory doesn't actually hold up, because many readers won't read beyond the first page. Instead, Web designers should follow the example of sites like Buzzfeed and the Verge, which offer scroll-through stories. "If you build things that don’t annoy people and if it’s presented in a user-friendly way, then, long-term, people will share content more, new people will come and check out what you’re doing," Buzzfeed's founder tells Manjoo. Click through for Manjoo's full column. (More World Wide Web stories.)