Long product catalogues: pagination or a load-more button?
A customer opens a product from a catalogue, reads its specifications, and returns to the beginning of the list. They must scan the same products again to find their place. The decision here is not how many filters to add. It is how visitors move through a long list and return from a detail page. The numbered cover diagram is an original interface study, not real inventory or sales data.
Understand how visitors browse before choosing a pattern
A spare-parts buyer may know a precise code, while someone looking for furniture may explore and compare alternatives. Those journeys do not necessarily need identical list behaviour. The first needs effective search; the second needs legible cards and a clear sense of position. Pagination, filtering and search are related decisions rather than substitutes for one another.
Do not choose from the total product count alone. Card size, image weight and comparison needs also matter. Build an example with real product content first. Observe when someone loses their sense of position on a phone and what they expect after returning from a product detail. A small but realistic catalogue is more useful for this exercise than empty placeholder cards.
Compare three patterns with the same task
Numbered pages are a clear starting point when visitors need to return to a section or share its address. A load-more button adds another group on request; it needs a visible loading state and a useful account of progress. Infinite scrolling can support continuous exploration, but reaching the footer and recovering a previous position require deliberate design.
Do not select a pattern merely because its motion looks impressive. Try the same task in each prototype: open a product in the third group, return, then locate the neighbouring product. Check whether that journey is understandable. Next, try to reach a contact or technical-help link near the end of the page, especially after several groups have loaded.
Do not hide the whole catalogue behind a button
Google Search Central explains that its crawler generally follows links with href attributes rather than clicking load-more buttons. Its guidance recommends distinct URLs and self-referencing canonicals for paginated pages. This is not a promise of indexing, but it is a useful basis for making additional products reachable through links.
Specify more than “animated loading” in the development brief. Which products should appear when someone opens the second group’s URL directly? Where should the return link lead, and how should filters persist? If the next group fails to load, keep the existing cards available and give the visitor a clear way to retry rather than replacing the entire list with an unexplained blank area.
Inspect a second-group state
Check three ways of returning before launch
Try the browser’s back button, the product page’s catalogue link, and a directly shared list URL separately. If changing inventory makes an old position unavailable, provide an understandable starting point. When filters return no products, explain how to change them instead of leaving pagination controls beside an empty grid.
Related decisions include the product comparison table and the no-results search state. Include returns and failures in the website design scope, alongside the first catalogue screen. Our Erhan Mobilya presentation is a relevant example of product-led visual communication; the pagination study here does not claim that this particular interaction was implemented for that project.
Frequently asked questions
Is infinite scrolling always a poor catalogue choice?
No. It may suit exploration. Assess it alongside finding a previous position, reaching the end of the page and returning from a detail view.
Should page two canonicalise to page one?
For pagination pages showing different products, Google recommends a self-referencing canonical on each page. Filter variants and duplicate URLs need separate consideration.