Marketing for IFAs
IFA Websites : Clicking vs Scrolling?
Firstly “Consider your Market”
The question might not be as simple as you think. The demographics of Financial Advisers' clients tend to be in their late 50s. Not all are so conversant on tablets, scrolling and accessing websites via mobile devices. We've looked closely at our statistics and know that to be true.
And not to be forgotten the FCA's strident rules about clear (above the line) warnings!!! which could be lost on longer pages.
Still an interesting topic!
Website Clicking
There are however advantages and disadvantages to both scrolling and clicking. For instance in the case of scrolling it could seem that the advantages are superior to the disadvantages. Scrolling can be faster than clicking for website users. With modern devices including touch pads that use a 'swiping' action and a scrolling mouse does mean that users can scroll through longer pages of content with ease.
Moving through content by clicking can involve the completion of several actions. First your website user has to find the link, read the link, click the link and finally wait for the new page of content to load. Strongs “calls to action” can help with this as does clear navigation.
Website Scrolling
When scrolling users on a web page can see all the content in the order it is designed to be read. It could be said that with clicking users could miss links and pages without realising.
Scrolling can helps users maintain their natural reading flow. Thus enabling them to reach the end of content naturally. The action of clicking can interrupt the users reading flow as they have to pick up again when the next page loads.
So which website method is best?
Despite the draw backs of speed and ease of use of scrolling over clicking; there are a few advantages to clicking. When users click to new content you can track users behavior with analytics. This is not possible with scrolling as all the information is presented on one page making it more difficult to track users website behavior.
With Google and SEO performance separate pages with work harder for your website. Each page will have its own link (meta titles and descriptions) which can be shared with other users. These links will also be indexed in the major search engines like Google. Again, whereas with scrolling only that one page will be indexed, rather than many shorter ones.
When comparing scrolling and clicking there are pros and cons to be argued for each. Scrolling would appear to be the better option for usability, whereas clicking has the benefits of analytics and being better indexed by search engines.
It's often a case of finding a balance between your website's performance and the experience you give to your users.