Many Internet websites have the habit to divide articles in tiny little chapters that sometimes require you to click ten or more times on next to read the full article. If you want to reread a part you have to click back to do so. I once again came by a website that used this technique, it’s Information Week and their article Top 60 Little-Known Technology Web Sites. Ghacks is unfortunately not in that list.
The article is divided into ten parts and you have to click on the numbers below each part to navigate to the rest. A far better way would be to scan the page for a PRINT button, because this usually opens a new window with the full article without advertisement and navigation.
I do use this trick for several years and it is working perfectly on those websites. The print function at Information Week opens the complete article at once.
A few words about why they do this, why websites divided articles into smaller parts. They are not thinking about the reader here, that they don’t want him to scroll the article for instance. They don’t want him to scroll the article for another reason, advertisement. It is all about ads on the page.
The longer an article gets the lesser ads you will most likely see. Ads tend to concentrate on the top, and maybe at the very bottom. Another reason for dividing up articles is the increase in Pageviews. Advertisers love Pageviews. If you tell them that your readers view 10.0 pages per visit instead of 1.0 page per visit they are impressed.
More pages also increases the time visitors stay on a website which is another important figure for advertisers. Oh, and you do earn more if you sell direct advertisement. If you get 1000 visitors per day and publish one article per day you would get 1000 pageviews if each visitor would read one article. If you divided that article by ten pages you would get a figure much higher, close to 10000 depending on how many visitors decided to quit reading because of the navigation.
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The re-pagination add-on for FF works great as well.
Nice trick, thanks :)
Ghacks is unfortunately not in that list.
It’s a real shame. For me your blog is very valuable information source – because we share common interest: PC software, for Windows and cross-platform.
You write about things that help be productive and effective. And it’s great – because I think we can’t afford be slow, clumsy and stupid.
I just reviewed that list – and find nothing for me (from 60 sites!). Only one – Portable apps – was about my favorite hobby, but I don’t care too much for portability…
As for trick with print page – I know it. And even developed filter for old great Proxomitron, that opens print page on ComputerWorld automatically, instead of main article page.
Yes thanks for the print tip. I hadn’t thought about that. And that’s interesting info on why they use multi-page.