How far would you scroll?

[Esoteric]

Hey guys, I am adding an online store for a few items on my website. How far would you scroll to find a product you want to purchase?

Mike

[JoshGuerette]

Like if we knew the product was 3/4 of the way down the page? How about if you had anchors up top so you could click it and automatically jump down to a section or something?

[tedanderson]

It would depend on what was on the site and what I was looking for.

Like if I was on your site looking for XLR cables and I got to a page that listed them all.. and say that I could list them in order according to price, I'd probably scroll down as far as I had to in order to find what I needed.

But if it was just random items and I was looking to see what you had, I'd probably not scroll very far at all.

[riafekim]

I like the online stores that give me the option. For instance on some websites they show the first 10 items and the they force you to go to the next page. However there is sometimes a dropdown that gives me the choice of how many items I want to show. 10, 25, 50, All. That leaves the decision in my hands as the user. If I have a slower internet connection then the 10 per page is just perfect if. If I want to see everything the store has in that section I can do that too.

[OfficeChairGuy]

I've had this question for years now and I think the answer is really personal preference. I have a site called OfficeAnything.com. Some of my product categories have nearly 800 items. These categories are impossible to break down further.

To avoid having 50 pages of products I went with a 4 across grid with nearly 200 products per page. Our conversions have gone up significantly. I'm not saying this is the best way, but it really worked for us!

[WCC]

three scrolls...but depends on how bad I want the product. I would be more concerned with site load speed...if you site is super slow I'm backing out and going to the next site.

[dmot]

If the items are all in a reasonable category I would scroll a long way. The reason is that the items at the top load first and while I am looking at them items lower down are loading. By the time I scroll down those items are loaded and I can keep going. It is frustrating if I constantly have to click "next" and wait for the new page to load. As you can tell I have low end DSL service.

This isn't true if the products aren't related. In that case it feels like what I want may not even be on the page and I am just wasting my time. If it is the same category, Let's say mic cables, I like having a couple of rows of "Most Ratings" first. I also like "top sellers" first but sometimes my cynical side thinks that really means "stock our company would really like to get rid of." Anyway, chances are what I am after is something everyone else wants too so the item I want will be in the first few rows. After that you can break it down by cable length or quality grade. That way I can see where I am and know if I am heading in the direction I want to go as I scroll down. If I am scrolling through random items it just frustrates me.

[rjwalker]

I'm with dmot.

And, FWIW, I prefer to use my browser search function looking for stuff "down page." Whi
ch might help in wording stuff on your pages.