What is an accordion in Web Design?

Web design is a fundamental element in gaining visibility and organic traffic online. A good design is like a book cover as it allows users to have the first view of your business and decide whether or not they will continue scrolling.

When people hear the word accordion, they automatically think of the musical instrument, but what is an accordion in web design? The fundemental feature is essential for any high-functioning website. Continue reading to find out more about the benefits of using accordion on your website.

What is an accordion and how is it used in web design?

Simply put, accordions are a feature used in web design to reveal or hide content and they are presented as a list of headers.

Usually, they are arranged into groups of five, but there is a limit to how many you can put on a page. Their main function is to help break up content so it is easier for users to read it at a single glance. As mentioned above, accordions can also hide some content which will only be visible when they are clicked by visitors (think about step-by-step guides or FAQ pages, where users can click on the question they want, without the need to have every single question visible).

On the flip side, the accordion should not be overused, as it can make the website less user-friendly if you have to click too many features on the page to get to the important information.

When to use accordions for your website?

There are many situations when it is recommended the use of accordions in web design, like when you have to display a lot of content on a limited space (page).

Other great benefits are making the web page easy to use with an at-a-glance view of the content. This also allows users to stay focused on important information and easily process it. Another great benefit for using an accordion is to fit additional SEO optimised content on a site that seemingly doesn’t fit anywhere else on the busy page. Accordions are crawlable by search engines and can contain rankable content that helps your site find organic traffic.

Types of accordions

There are different types of accordions that web designers use, depending on their purpose:

Single accordions: used to hide information on busy pages.
Stacked accordions: this allows users to select the option they want to see in terms of content.