FW: Designing "Read More" And "Continue Reading" Links

Most bloggers and website designers understand how difficult it can be to attract visitors to a website. In fact, most websites have just moments to attract potential readers. Several factors contribute to how well a website attracts its readers. These factors include well-written headlines, interesting content and design quality. While all of these aspects are important, today we will focus on a very specific and sometimes overlooked element in a website’s design: the “Read more” or “Continue reading” link that follows a headline or summary of an article.

Every website has its own way of asking readers to click on an article link. Some websites have very prominent links, others are a bit subtler. Either way, website and user interface designers have thought up some very creative and innovative ways of inviting readers to read on. In this showcase, we will present 45 websites that have excellent “Read more” and “Continue reading” links in their design. Hopefully, these websites will serve as inspiration for your future projects or at least remind you not to ignore this important design element.

Best Practices

Before we present the showcase, let’s understand why “Read more” links are so important. They are important for several reasons, most importantly because they allow designers to compress content on the home page. By compressing content, you fit more content in less space. This means that readers can scan headlines more quickly and that you can fit more information above the fold.

Also, “Read more” links allow website administrators to more easily track the most popular content. Designers who put entire articles on the home page may make it difficult for website administrators to track the most popular articles and understand what users want to see.

The third and probably most practical reason for having “Read more” links on a website is money. Websites that monetize traffic understand that the more their readers click on links, the more likely they will look at and click on advertisements. “Read more” links can double or even triple the number of page views a website receives, making it more attractive to advertisers.

Now that we understand why “Read more” links are so important, let’s investigate some best practices for implementation.

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