Some article websites (I’m looking at msn.com right now, as an example) show the first page or so of article content and then have a “Continue Reading” button, which you must click to see the rest of the article. This seems so ridiculous, from a UX perspective–I know how to scroll down to continue reading, so why hide the text and make me click a button, then have me scroll? Why has this become a fairly common practice?

  • ArgentRaven@lemmy.world
    1322·
    6 months ago

    It’s two fold:

    1. it’s good proof of “user interaction with site” to sell to advertisers

    2. they can use that to load more ads or refresh current ones after it loads more text, and you’re already bought in on the story so you’re likely going to keep going.

    I suspect a third reason is to try adding other news stories at the end in case the current one didn’t grab your attention, but that doesn’t seem to be as consistent amongst sites that I’ve seen do this. I run ad blockers though, so I don’t really see the sites the way they expect me to.

      • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
        461·
        6 months ago

        Nah that’s not it. The text content is an infinitesimal portion of a modern Web page.

        Many webpages are > 1mb, that’s a million letters if you will.

        • VlynEnglish
          4·
          6 months ago

          Articles usually have images and possibly embedded videos. So it’s not just text.

          Even so, a decent webserver wouldn’t really care.

          Maybe it loads faster for mobile users though if you only load text and a single image at first.

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
            1·
            6 months ago

            I’m not sure what you’re getting at.

            The comment I replied to said that maybe the “read more” button is an effort to conserve bandwidth by only sending half the text.

            I said that the text is such a tiny portion of the bandwidth required to transmit a web page that it wouldn’t make sense to try conserving it by only sending half.

            You’re absolutely correct in that only sending images on the visible part of the page is a common way to conserve bandwidth.

      • pathief@lemmy.world
        11·
        6 months ago

        The cost of making a new request for the rest of the news is higher than just returning the full news. The only use case where this makes sense is where news are behind a paywall and you just want to show a teaser to Anonymous readers.

        • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          The only use case where this makes sense is where news are behind a paywall

          It can be particularly good in soft-paywall situations, where you want to give people a certain number of clicks per month before they have to start paying.

          I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen these “keep reading” buttons used in that way, though.