I am wondering if paginating long lists of items is really necessary or just a habit or standard that harks back to a time long past.
I created many websites for clients not just recently but over many years and each one explicitly stated that they didn’t want their page paginated.
One website owner which I had implemented pagination for asked to have it removed as they want customers to see a full list of items rather than one page full at a time, they felt pagination hindered the sites navigation.
So I am wondering if paginating lists of items is at all relevant to the success of a website?
Which would you rather see…I shorter, readable list of 10-50 entries, or one huge list of 3,000?
Pagination is partly used for readability & comprehension (to avoid information overload), and partially to conserve memory and processing resources on both the server side and the client (browser) side.
Chances are, the user doesn’t need to see all 3,000 entries. Perhaps they’re only interested in the first 2-3 pages.
I’d say it depends on scale. If you have a large quantity of items, then it makes sense to use a pagination system. If you don’t have many items, however, and know the list won’t expand over time, then a pagination system might not be needed. So I’d say it the answer is “it depends”.