Pagination Patterns

Pagination divides content into discrete pages with navigation, providing position awareness, control, and finite content boundaries.

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Design Principles

Pagination splits large content sets into discrete pages with clear boundaries, position awareness, and the ability to jump to specific positions. Unlike infinite scroll, it communicates total scope and allows bookmarking. Essential for search results, data tables, and reference content.

Why It Matters

Pagination patterns determine how users navigate large data sets, content archives, and search results, directly affecting discoverability, perceived performance, and user control. The choice between traditional numbered pages, infinite scroll, load-more buttons, or cursor-based pagination shapes whether users feel oriented and in command or lost and overwhelmed. Selecting the wrong pagination pattern for the content type and user intent is a frequent source of frustration that increases bounce rates and degrades accessibility.

Real-World Examples

Google Search numbered pagination

Google Search uses traditional numbered pagination with clear indicators of the current page and total estimated results, allowing users to jump to specific pages and return to previous results reliably. The pattern suits the goal-oriented nature of search, where users often refine queries and revisit earlier result pages. Each page loads quickly because the data set per page is bounded and predictable.

Load-more button on an e-commerce category page

An online retailer uses a load-more button at the bottom of product grids, appending the next batch of results to the existing list without a full page reload. This hybrid approach gives users control over when new content appears while preserving their scroll position and previously viewed items. The URL updates with each load to support direct linking and back-button navigation.

Counter-example

Infinite scroll on a government document archive

A public records site implements infinite scroll for a legal document archive containing thousands of entries, making it impossible for users to bookmark a position, share a specific result set, or reach the footer which contains critical legal disclaimers and contact information. Users searching for a specific filing cannot gauge their progress or jump ahead, turning a targeted task into an endless scroll. The lack of URL updates means the back button returns users to the top of the list, discarding minutes of scrolling.

Role-Specific Guidance

Common Mistakes

• The most common mistake is choosing infinite scroll by default because it feels modern, without evaluating whether the content type and user intent actually benefit from it — infinite scroll is hostile to goal-oriented tasks, footer access, and accessibility. Another frequent error is failing to preserve state when users navigate to a detail page and return, forcing them to re-scroll or re-load from page one. Implementing offset-based pagination on live data sets produces duplicate or missing items when the data changes between page requests, creating a silently broken experience that is difficult for users to identify and report.