I happened to be reading an WashingtonPost.com article on former DC Zoo resident, Happy the Hippo (why? ’cause hippos are cool). Anyways, I get to the bottom of the article, er, the bottom of page one of the article and see this nice bit of white space. Then I find the article navigation (placed weirdly off the the right) and realized they’ve split poor Happy’s article into four, yes FOUR, pages. And to do that, they didn’t even fill the whole content area for the article on page one. They left a bunch of white space, which was really there because all the ads in the right sidebar, just so they could stretch out their article. And why do they do this? Page Views.
Washington Post Page View Gimmick
With their ever shrinking ad revenues, WashingtonPost.com and most other major news websites seem to be constantly resorting to this gimmick. Certainly not for the benefit of the user. I know I love having to click through five pages to read some fluff piece about a hippo1. So, thanks news sites, for sacrificing everyone’s user experience so you could make a few extra cents from your advertisers. This is yet another reason why you’re all going out of business.
1. Actually, I refused to click through any further. And I’m going to try to never click through any of these again. I think I can live without this crap.
Tags: design, pageviews, washingtonpost, website
Many sites will allow you to click on “view on single page.” I usually scroll down to look for that.
I was also annoyed by the page clicks required to view this same article. I think it’s the NYT that has an option to view in one page. Why can’t all site be like that? I didn’t connect that it would increase ad revenue, but it’s definitely detracting from my experience!
@Kathryn, some sites feature an option to view in a single page. Washingtonpost.com does not, at least not on the Happy article I referenced. However, it shouldn’t have to be an option that I need to search for, it should just be the default design. Extra clicks and page loads do not increase my enjoyment of a website.