3 Infinite Scroll Plugins For High Engagement Rates(WP)

Low engagement rates and high bounce rates: These are the two top most issues a new blogger has to tackle on a daily basis.

One smart strategy to keep the readers engaged and thus reduce bounce rate is to implement Infinite Scroll.

What is Infinite Scroll?

After a reader almost completes reading an article and reaches the bottom of a web page, more content is automatically loaded, thus encouraging the reader to read the next article; this is known as infinite scrolling.

For example, Forbes.com has implemented infinite scrolling. Just read any article and scroll to the end of the article and tada! The next article is already there for you to read!

Benefits of using Infinite Scroll

A few benefits of using Infinite scroll in your blog

Increase the viewer time on the site(High Engagement Rate)
Increase conversion rates
More opt-ins
Better Sales. Sell more products
Infinite scrolling is mobile friendly as well

So how to implement Infinite scroll ?

If you are a WordPress blogger, you are in luck! There a few amazing infinite scroll plugins that will do the job right! Install the plugin and follow instructions as provided by the plugin developer.

Here are the best Infinite scroll plugins for WordPress bloggers. Enjoy.

#1 WordPress Infinite Scroll – Ajax Load More

As the name clearly suggests, this powerful plugin lets you create Ajax powered queries and then setup infinite scroll for posts, single posts, pages and comments based on the Ajax powered query.

Highlight of this plugin is a shortcode builder using whcih you can create complex custom WordPress queries. Once you do that, then easily integrate the generated short code into your page using content editor. Or if you can code a bit, you can add the short code directly to your template files as well.

Good news! Ajax Load More is now available for endless scrolling in WooCommerce Stores. This would keep your would be customers glued to your product list, as your product catalog page loads more products dynamically. This plugin is multi-site compatible as well.

More Important Features:

Multiple occurrences of Ajax Loader: Within same page or post 9or template as well), add multiple occurrences of same Ajax Loader short code.
Repeater Templates: Extend functionality of this awesome plugin by coming up your own repeater template. This template can be edited in such a way to match the look and feel of your WordPress blog.
Query Parameters for different content types: – It lets you query your WordPress blog using Post Type, Category,Post Format, Date, Tags, Search Term, Authors, Taxonomies and so on. This way you can set up amazing mix of content that you want to load dynamically.

Pro Version: This plugin is free to use. It also has a Pro paid version. The paid version has more advanced features such as Filters(for building and managing Ajax filters), Advanced Custom Fields (infinite scrolling for flexible Content, Repeater fields for Advanced Custom Fields), Masonry layouts, display a Progress Bar with each Ajax request and so on.

Recommended WordPress Resources:

#2 DMD Infinite Scroll

Even though this plugin was developed for dynamic loading of WooCommerce products, it can now be used for any other posts as well. It permits Pagination of up to 10 sets of posts within same template. It also features a “Load More” button to load more posts or products dynamically.

Feature Highlights :

You can customize your next page and previous page buttons with Infinite scroll and load more button.
If you have an WooCommerce store, page can be scrolled to the top, when the products container is refreshed with new products.
You can set a Custom threshold or maximum limit for infinite scroll
You can have Custom JavaScript code executed, based on events. Ie: Either before or after posts(products) are loaded.

#3 YITH Infinite Scrolling

This is a simple, but effective plugin that can give a nice infinite scrolling effect for WooCommerce stores(Could not find documentation for posts infinite scroll).

Most Ecommerce stores have a problem. When people search for something, products are listed across multiple pages.

Two Issues here:

First of all, people don’t browse all product pages from search result
Worse, they often lose track of which items they are interested in or even worse, forget the page in which they found them! Finally they may abandon and leave the site frustrated.

YITH Infinite Scrolling was evolved to solve this issue. Display more and more products in your product catalog dynamically as user tries to click on “Next”. This way user can still see all the products he has an interest. This strategy can sure improve sales.

Features:

Mobile Friendly. Infinite scroll works in mobile devices as well
Nice Transition effect when new products are dynamically loaded
WPML(WordPress MultiLingual Plugin) Compatible: Your store can now support multiple languages and YITH plugin is fully compatible with WPML.

Premium (Paid) Version: YITH has a paid version with better features.

Premium Features:

Add infinite scrolling to multiple sections
Manage each individual section using its own option panel.
Customize “load more” button: You can set the label for the button and can apply better styles(css).
Page URL is automatically updated every time new elements are loaded using AJAX

More details and documentation can be found here.

Final Words:

We saw how important infinite scrolling is and how it can significantly boost your engagement rate. Big news sites like Forbes understood the importance of it and have implemented infinite scrolling. And for WooCommerce stores, this is “Must and should have” kind of plugin. It is surprising that despite a huge increase in number of WordPress blogs, only a handful have implemented this feature! So an infinite scroll plugin could be your secret weapon and implement it today.. I mean ..NOW.. Take action and reap the rewards!

Author Bio: Tom George is a freelance writer and webmaster, who loves to read and write articles on WordPress, web design and web development. You can find more interesting articles in his techie blog.