How Bad Pagination Ruined Blockbuster's Cool Web 2.0 Site
November 28th, 2007 in Design Tips & Tutorials
by: Matthew Griffin
Ah, pagination... we use it so often we forget it's even there. We glide gracefully from page to page taking every click for granted. That is, of course, until we are jolted back to reality by a site that has it all wrong. Bad pagination can make you do and say things you ordinarily wouldn't dream of. It's absolutely infuriating.
A perfect example of this and the inspiration for this article is the pagination on the Blockbuster website. I subscribe to their Netflixish DVD rental service which puts me on the website about once every other week to peruse their movie selection. The site is well laid out and has some very helpful features including an ajax powered movie queue. But when you scroll down to the bottom of a movie list page, this is what you'll will see:
With the nice big buttons all over the rest of the site, this is the best they can do? I've got a 3 x 5 pixel square to click every time I want to go to the next page. It's more like the fine print at the bottom of a legal document than real pagination links. I love their service but Blockbuster, please do something about this.
After using the Blockbuster website for over a year now, I can honestly blame bad pagination for at least two sour friendships and a broken keyboard. Remember this story and don't put your visitors through the same thing. Take the time to make your pagination easy to use. If you need some inspiration, check out the recent article in Smashing Magazine about creative pagination. Also, if you're a professional web designer don't forget that you only need to develop a good pagination feature once. After that it's just a matter of copy and past and color variations.
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