Bear in mind clicking? That sharp, deliberate motion the place you made a alternative, dedicated to a path, and opened the subsequent door within the digital home? Yeah—clicking is lifeless. Or at the very least dying.
Slowly, awkwardly, like Web Explorer clinging to life in a forgotten company IT division. Scrolling has taken over. And it’s not only a UX shift. It’s a philosophical one.
Let’s speak about why that issues—and why it may be each the most effective and worst factor to occur to net design.
Scroll Is the New Click on
You used to discover an internet site one web page at a time. Click on the About hyperlink. Look ahead to the web page to load. Then the Contact hyperlink. Wait once more. Clicking was decisive. It was the person saying, “Sure, I would like this. Take me there.”
At this time? You land on a website and also you scroll. And scroll. And scroll. It’s not a journey anymore—it’s a feed. Infinite scroll, parallax scroll, horizontal scroll, scroll-jacking nightmares… the clicking is now not your car. Scrolling is.
We’ve lowered interplay right down to a single finger twitch. And whereas that sounds accessible and clean, let’s be sincere—it’s additionally lazy design dressed up as comfort.
This Isn’t About UX. It’s About Management.
Right here’s the true controversy: scrolling offers designers—and platforms—extra management.
Clicks give energy to the person. You see navigation. Making a decision. You observe your path.
Scrolling hides that alternative. You’re on rails. The designer decides what you see and while you see it. Like Instagram or TikTok, the structure is vertical, addictive, and passive. You’re now not navigating—you’re consuming.
Don’t get it twisted: infinite scroll isn’t about higher expertise. It’s about metrics. Scroll depth. Time on web page. Engagement. Retention.
Extra scrolling = extra monitoring.
Clicks had been binary: clicked or didn’t. Scrolling? It’s a spectrum of conduct to be mined and monetized.
Scrolling Is the TikTokification of the Net
TikTok rewired the dopamine loop. You don’t click on something. You swipe. The content material simply arrives. The subsequent factor is all the time there. There’s no choice fatigue, simply content material inertia.
Now take a look at trendy web sites: auto-playing video, sticky navigation, infinite modules, progressive disclosure that reveals simply sufficient to maintain you sliding. TikTok didn’t simply kill YouTube—it’s consuming the online.
Even critical platforms have purchased in. Product pages stretch vertically without end. Portfolios unroll like social feeds. Touchdown pages haven’t any seen nav, simply hero > testimonial > CTA > pricing > FAQ > signup > footer > oh-wait-here’s-more.
That is not navigation. It’s content material as conveyor belt.
The Phantasm of Freedom
We inform customers that scrolling is intuitive. Pure. However that’s a half-truth.
Scrolling is frictionless, certain—however friction isn’t all the time unhealthy. Typically friction = readability. Friction makes you cease and assume. Decide. Select a course.
With clicks, customers ask: The place do I need to go?
With scrolls, they ask: How rather more of that is there?
One creates orientation. The opposite creates disorientation dressed up in glossy UX polish.
Designers Are Complicit
And let’s not faux we’re harmless right here. We adopted this sample as a result of shoppers need “trendy” websites. As a result of stakeholders are allergic to bounce charges. As a result of metrics demand we maintain individuals scrolling like zombies by rigorously engineered fluff.
We jam every part onto one web page to keep away from “dropping” customers between clicks. We take away nav menus. We scale back decisions. We clean each fringe of friction—and we find yourself designing for passivity, not company.
We’ve turned net design into behavioral manipulation.
search engine marketing and Scroll Don’t Combine (However We Fake It’s Nice)
Right here’s a grimy little secret: engines like google are nonetheless constructed round discrete pages. Each time we kill a click on and shove content material into an extended scroll, we sacrifice indexable floor space.
Your 12,000-word pillar submit crammed right into a single web page? It’s doing half the search engine marketing work it may if it had been damaged into actual, linkable subpages.
However we maintain doing it. Why? As a result of scrolling “feels higher.” As a result of it’s “trendy.” As a result of somebody noticed it on Stripe’s homepage and copied it like a cargo cult ritual.
Click on-based navigation is best for structure. Scroll is best for vibes.
Guess which one wins in 2025?
Scrolling Hurts UX on Cell—and We Know It
Cell UX was supposed to learn from scrolling, proper? Fewer clicks, smoother transitions, thumb-friendly.
However guess what’s more durable on cell?
- Remembering the place you’re on an extended scrolling web page
- Navigating again to a piece
- Bookmarking a subsection
- Sharing a deep-linked factor
We clear up these issues with anchors, sticky headers, and soar hyperlinks—however sooner or later it’s important to ask: if it’s essential duct tape navigation again in, was eradicating clicks price it?
Scroll-Solely UX Is Hostile to Cognitive Load
When every part is on one web page, and the one interplay is scrolling, you’re overloading the person.
There’s no psychological segmentation. No break between contexts. Only a wall of content material. It feels seamless, certain—but it surely’s like studying a 300-page novel with no chapters or web page breaks.
Click on-based navigation gave customers breathers. It allow them to cease, consider, and select.
Scroll UX assumes customers need zero decisions. However in actuality, individuals don’t need friction—they need orientation. The extra we depend on scroll-only layouts, the extra we flatten the cognitive expertise into an countless stream.
And streams are straightforward to get misplaced in.
There’s No Going Again—However There Is a Center Floor
Let’s face it: we’re not going again to paginated web sites with 7-click-deep nav bushes. And that’s superb.
However perhaps it’s time we admit scrolling has limits.
Possibly we design hybrid layouts: clean scroll with modular click-based soar factors. Pages that don’t power alternative however supply it. Navigation that’s nonetheless seen. Content material that’s chunked into psychological zones, not infinite rivers.
As a result of once we design just for scroll, we’re not enhancing the expertise. We’re turning web sites into comfortable surveillance machines optimized for consideration seize, not utility.
Closing Scroll (Sure, Pun Supposed)
The press didn’t die naturally—it was murdered within the title of engagement metrics, feed-thinking, and the delusion that infinite scroll is all the time higher.
We traded readability for smoothness. Company for inertia. Pages for vibes.
And now, the online is stuffed with lovely, fluid, emotionally manipulative funnels the place customers scroll endlessly—till they neglect what they got here for within the first place.
Possibly it’s time we cease designing for scroll habit and begin designing for intent once more.
Let’s speak about it. Are you continue to clicking? Or are you simply… drifting?
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