The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing
As web professionals, we all know that the concept of the page fold being an impenetrable barrier for users is a myth. Over the last 6 years we’ve watched over 800 user testing sessions between us and on only 3 occasions have we seen the page fold as a barrier to users getting to the content they want.
In this article we’re going to break down the page fold myth and give some tips to ensure content below the fold gets seen.
What is the fold?
Above the fold is a graphic design term that refers to important content being on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper. It’s commonly used on the web to describe the area you see on a web page before you have to scroll down the page.
Why we don’t worry about the fold
People tell us that they don’t mind scrolling and the behaviour we see in user testing backs that up. We see that people are more than comfortable scrolling long, long pages to find what they are looking for. A quick snoop around the web will show you successful brands that are not worrying about the fold either:
BBC, Play, Amazon.co.uk and the New York Times websites showing the position of the page fold
Adding evidence from user testing
When we user test here at cxpartners we use an eye tracker. The eye tracker lets us see what the user sees. We then take the combined eye tracking data from each study and produce a series of heatmaps. The heatmaps show us what as a whole the user group is looking at.
Scrollbars are used to assess page length and to indicate content below the fold
One of the most common things we see on a heatmap is a strong hotspot over the scrollbar. The scrollbar is used to assess the page length. Users expect to have to scroll. The heatmap below shows this.
Heatmap from eyetracking showing scrollbar as cue to page length.
Less content above the fold may encourage more exploration below the fold
The image below shows some recent eye tracking work we did with Bristol Airport. The screens show two different design treatments for the hero slot (the large, prominent image area) on the homepage. The surprising thing we learnt was that actually having less above the fold (one large content block as opposed to 2 smaller ones) encouraged exploration below the fold.
When there is not exploration below the fold
As we mentioned in the introduction there have been 3 occasions where there was little exploration below the fold. In each case the cause was the same.
One of these occasions was some user testing work we did for First Choice last year. The page below, a very long one, caused problems as users were not scrolling down the page.
The blue horizontal bar was the barrier to scrolling.
The long blue ‘Accommodation’ heading was acting as a barrier. This is the common theme – strong horizontal lines across the page discourage scrolling.
First Choice have now fixed the horizontal line issues and have content just showing above the fold.
The image library pokes up just above the fold indicating that there is content beneath.
Design tips to encourage scrolling
We can offer three design tips to ensure content below the fold is seen.
- Less is more – don’t be tempted to cram everything above the fold. Good use of whitespace and imagery encourages exploration.
- Stark, horizontal lines discourage scrolling - this doesn’t mean stop using horizontal full width elements. Have a small amount of content just visible, poking up above the fold to encourage scrolling.
- Avoid the use of in-page scroll bars - the browser scrollbar is an indicator of the amount of content on the page. iFrames and other elements with scroll bars in the page can break this convention and may lead to content not being seen.
Update Friday 9th October 2009. 10am GMT
Just some clarification. On all our testing set-ups we force the browser size to be 1024 x 740 px. This puts the average page fold at around 700px on screen shots above.
Our research shows the most effective place for content is above the fold, no surprises there. We are saying that people do scroll. Users scroll if there are cues to scroll and no design barriers to scrolling.
Update 2 Friday 9th October 2009 1pm GMT
Richie Lee make a really good point below about bordering content to give a further visual cue that there is further content below the fold.
There are some tips here for designing e-commerce product pages and forms with further tips on dealing with the fold:
- What people see before they buy: Design guidelines for e-commerce product pages with eyetracking data
- Web form design guidelines: an eyetracking study
Keep the comments coming,
Joe at cxpartners (Follow cxpartners on Twitter: @cxpartners)
About the author
Fiz Yazdi
Fiz has 15 years experience managing projects. She’s worked with some great clients including the Houses of Parliament, Proctor & Gamble and UCAS, making their websites more usable and effective.
About the author
Joe specialises in designing every aspect of the user experience from initial research to developing a robust, measurable online strategy to producing beautiful, easy to use wireframes and website information architectures. Email Joe, or call +44 (0)117 946 3930
Great article.
Was this also the same on registration forms? Did having it on one page but below the fold do any better or worse than ones broken down in ‘chunks’?
Would be interested to know.
Interesting to see the need for a visual queue of more content at the bottom (above fold) in addition to scroll bar positioning. Less information visible above fold may be another queue that the user is not seeing the majority of available information, maybe this is encouraging scrolling. Perhaps seeing a lot of information above the fold gives the user a sense that they have already discovered the majority of what the page offers, and therefore they may be less inclined to scroll to see more of same. What seems to make sense to me is a clean design above the fold that relies only on scroll bar positioning as a cue of more information below is a mistake if you want to maximize viewing of all content by most users.
Hi Gareth,
The fold doesn’t seem to be a problem with forms. User stop scrolling when they hit a button.
More details on form design here:
http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/cxinsights/web_forms_design_guidelines_an_eyetracking_study.htm
joe
Thank you for articulating what I’ve observed anecdotally for some time. There is a constant pressure from clients to keep everything ‘above the fold’ which results in many bad decisions being forced onto web designs. Glad to see this shown in a technical and well documented context. I will be sharing this article.
Thanks Joe,
Another great article, thanks for the link.
I will be referencing this article very soon!
You seem to have an unstated assumption as to normal window sizes. For example, how else can one ensure “a small amount of content just visible, poking up above the fold”? What size is that, and why do you think it’s significant?
In my own browsing, I hardly ever find two sites with the same height or width; my browser windows are pretty much randomly sized each time I hit a new site, and pretty much have to be resized for each site. It’s rather annoying, but there it is.
In my own page design, I searched a long time for some basis to pick a “standard” size, but eventualy despaired.
Hi
Would you be able to show where the fold lies on the Bristol Airport heat map examples?
Thanks!
Brilliant stuff Joe and Fiz. Really helpful to see the evidence provided by user testing. I love this stuff!
gold.
Interesting post, however, established/successful brands (like Amazon, The New York Times, Play, and BBC) have a distinct advantage over nearly everyone else simply because they are established and successful. The same rules of design do not always apply to category leaders. Their brand is successful enough and their reputation trusted by enough people that they can afford to pay by a different set of rules. In addition, each of the ones you mentioned are by their very nature meant to be deep on content, so there to, the above the fold rules doesn’t necessarily apply. Just something to consider when continuing this conversation.
Great article. I am new to usability testing (starting working with a startup in the space). The eye tracking work is telling.
Thanks for a great article!
We often have to work with clients/print designers that just don’t grasp the concept that users do know how to use scrollbars and trying to fit all the content above the fold simply wont work.
Now we have a great article to refer them all to!
Cheers,
Dean (@bigclick_dean)
Great article, if now my boss would only listen to me. Hes convinced that a webpage should have no browser scrollbars and that inpage scrollbars are the way to go, ive been suffering with this for a long time, where i have to cram EVERYTHING into a 780x 540 space just so that my boss can see the webpage in his crappy 300yr old laptop.
Any suggestions to MAKE him come into the future?
Thank you people of cxpartners for share this important informations. I will be back.
This article is a god send. I will definately be referring clients to this. Thank you!
This is a great article. I wish there was a university or some other public institution that could do research into the behaviors of web page users. Until then, I’ll have to use sites like usertesting.com – and articles like this one to debunk some of the ‘common sense’ that may not be such after all.
Thanks for the article, really good read. Plan to share with our Interactive and Creative departments.
One question, did browser window size make or show any difference in your testing?
Have you seen this article, Blasting the Myth of the Fold? http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of16
Interesting article. Still it is worth pointing out that there is a lot of evidence that suggests above and below the fold in *many* common situations does represent two distinct areas with dramatically lower interaction in the “below the fold” area. Your suggestions on how to design for fuller page exploration are interesting and I will share them with others I know. However I think the title “the Myth of the Page Fold” is catchy but not entirely accurate.
My counterexamples come from running controlled experiments such as A/B tests or multi-variable tests. The key differences are that we are considering millions of users and the users don’t know that they are in a test at the time. The second condition can have a big impact on measurements.
I see our two approaches as complementary and as part of my work, I strive towards combing disciplines such as experimentation, design and usability testing.
You can read more about our methods here: http://exp-platform.com/
Cheers,
Randy
Hi there,
Curious to learn how you do eye tracking below the fold? Is the software factoring in the users scroll behavior in relation to their focus within the viewport?
Admittedly, I’ve never done eye tracking and so this might be a silly question. It just seems to be a technically challenging thing to do, no?
Thanks for a great post.
Well said.
Jakob Nielsen helped to popularize the myth that web users don’t scroll down. It led to an era of website design that crammed as much onto one page, leading to busy, crowded homepages. It wasn’t until later that early adopters of CSS made websites simple again, in part to avoid compatibility issues with Internet Explorer.
Congratulations, you have rediscovered “The Illusion of Completeness” which Tog (Bruce Tognazzini) described in 1998: http://www.asktog.com/columns/007silodesign.html
Very interesting. I’ve usually sat on the fence with this issue and erred on the side of caution by taking the fold into consideration when I felt it was required. Only sometimes though. If this information is accurate, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to bother with it any more.
I still think though – every designer should be aware of the fold so that important messages don’t get ’shortened’ or taken out of context simply because someone was too lazy to scroll.
Thanks for sharing.
Great info here! This is important to keep in mind when designing a site.. Although people are fine with scrolling to find what they are looking for, it becomes a pain on sites where it is necessary to scroll past the header, graphics or promotions everytime you go to a new page. (Can’t quite recall which site I saw this on, but I didn’t stay on it for very long!)
When you scroll to find what you’re looking for, it’s less of a conscious mission than when you’re constantly scrolling to get “away” from certain sections.
Nice! Good to have evidence on this!
Would absolutely love to see a similar study on emails!
How much of an email do people read, etc.
Thanks!
I guess users are used to scrolling, but need to be triggered to do it. A cut-off image, one line of a paragraph of text,… will invite them to explore further.
I’ve been wondering whether the same holds true for news excerpts etc. you need to click on to get the entire article. I suspect it’s better to have them end halfway through a sentence to promote click-throughs, but I’m not sure. Any data on that?
Great article guys, this is one of those myths decision makers stubbornly hang on to with no evidence apart from ‘that’s the way it’s always been’.
The telling observation is “Have a small amount of content just visible, poking up above the fold to encourage scrolling.” and that is pretty intuitive.
At how many pixels down you think the page fold is nowadays? With monitors becoming bigger and bigger. But on the other hand, browsers have more and more toolbars. What’s a safe number?
Thanks for this interesting article!
Is there an established pixel depth for where the fold actually starts!
Thanks.
Hi JD,
I agree, cramming too much in seems to reduce scrolling, let the content ‘breath’ and give cues that there is more to come below the fold.
joe
At what resolution where your tests carried out? The fold obviously appears at different places on different screens and resolutions. Is there a recommended ‘fold peek position’. :)
Hi Chris,
Glad you find the article interesting. That’s exactly the reason we wrote it. We are always saying to clients the fold is not an issue but never had any real evidence only anecdotal experience. We needed to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk.
joe
Calling it a myth gives your article a nice dramatic title – everybody wants on that Dan Brown bandwagon, right? – but it’s hardly accurate.
Ten to fifteen years ago, when fledgling web users were more familiar with newspapers and screen resolutions were smaller, it was a real factor in layout out a site. Nowadays, of course, web users have evolved – teenagers right now have grown up using the web and scrolling away, so it’s no longer the issue it was. Plus the increase in the base screen resolution gives that much more screen real estate to play with and let designs breathe a bit more.
I enjoyed your well-researched article but I’m not sure I agree with your conclusions.
There’s a difference between KNOWING you can scroll and actually scrolling the page. Your work clearly shows that people KNOW they can scroll the page — I think the fixation on the scroll bar is pretty conclusive evidence. But this doesn’t mean that people WILL scroll the page. The reason this matters is that people may take your article to mean, “It doesn’t matter what you show in the first screenful of information, because people scroll nowadays”. In fact, contextual observations of users interacting with over 65,000 web pages shows that most web pages (> 50%) are viewed for less than 10 seconds and 45% of all clicks happen in the top left quadrant of the page when seen above the fold (http://tinyurl.com/46bez4). This means the first screenful of information is absolutely critical.
You won’t observe this behaviour in an eye tracking usability test because you’re paying people to use the web site — scrolling the page is their job. They’re not going to spend 10s on the page, decide it’s useless and hit the back button, as they might do in the real world. There is a social pressure on the participant to look around the page and complete the task you’ve set. So you observe scrolling behaviour that probably wouldn’t happen outside the lab.
Have you done any research into how people use the scroll wheel? That and larger monitors must be the biggest hardware change of the last decade.
Plus, from what I’ve seen, people actually *enjoy* using it.
Although I support your hypothesis, I have some question/issues.
A) In the study what was the user being asked to do?
B) How was user attention measured? It seems that assumptions are being made about how gaze relates to comprehension.
“We still cannot infer specific cognitive processes directly from a fixation on a particular object in a scene” Hoffman, J. E. -1998). Visual attention and eye movements. In H. Pashler (ed.), Attention (pp. 119-154). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
C) How may users/site were researched to make this study? Or is this mostly anecdotal, or trend-based?
D) What was your hypothesis or assumption prior to this study?
I know it isn’t an academic study, but this is masquerading as fact without any real evidence.
Great study. Fact is people scroll, do we really perceive users to be so retarded?
thx
Interesting piece. Some recent, extensive, U&A testing across two of my corporation’s larger websites suggested to us that persistent requirement to scroll i.e. all pages having significant amount of content below the fold, was still a real problem. Task completion was adversely affected in enough instances for us to be compelled to act. It also proved a source of significant annoyance for our disabled users who employ assistive technologies like screen magnifiers, trackballs etc.
On behalf of the entire web design and development community i’d like to thank you for doing this research and publishing this article – it gives us something solid to point the misinformed at! Expect this to be a *very* popular page long term!
Once again this study should be taken in context. It is not quite as simple as performing a broad study on whether to put content above or below the fold. The most important study should be to understand the users/consumer/customer, and how relevant the fold is in the first place?
Think of this debate in a physical environment, are we actually saying that all bricks and mortar stores should be laid out like Tesco, or superdrug. The answer is No. Only if the consumer reacts to the environment better for this brand. We are all individuals and we all function differently. An experience needs to be relevant for the user. Above or below the fold is a non argument unless it is relevant for the audience. The BBC is an information site, like a news paper, so of course people don’t mind scrolling.
If I am purchasing a £60k motor car, then I want to watch a movie, i want to feel inspired to make a purchase. I need to feel like all is laid out infront of me as simple as possible. In this scenario, the scroll bar is an alien function and breaks down my interaction with the media.
So the process must be:
1) Understand the user
2) Understand the brand, reason for using the site
3) Build the architecture of the page based on 1 +2 above
Simple!
Yes, very interesting indeed. But have to agree with William’s comment that the understanding your exact methodology would be more illuminating — particularly as your title comes on so strongly.
Interesting, but one thing I’d query. In your first heatmap image, does that orange spot on the right really show a user looking at the scrollbar? Given that the scroller is always at the top of a page if the page is scrollable, not near the bottom, as that heatmap shows…
Also, I’d have to agree that it might be a bit much to pull this from 800 sessions that probably all had different focuses. This is just a by product of those sessions, would that be a fair comment?
Nothing annoys me more than a website that has NO content above the fold except for a whopping big logo or advert. This will encourage me to leave the site altogether.
It’s quite symptomatic that users not only avoided looking at the ads placed on the pages: they avoided looking at any content that was placed directly next to one.
There is still some folding. For example at http://www.dmt.de/ it looks like the page does not change when you navigate menu on a small screen (like an iPhone).
finding out how far people scroll down your page is very important – especially with long sales page and landing pages. In http://www.pagealizer.com we show scroll distance distribution so there is no need to guess if people see the whole page or just above the fold.
Fiz and Joe,
Great article. I’m going to pass this one around to our Project Managers who often have to explain this concept repeatedly to clients throughout the design process. The images you’re showing, particularly the comparison of successful brands with “long” pages and those that show the design barriers to scrolling, are very effective.
Last February, I wrote our newsletter on “designing for the web,” which included a section on this particular topic (http://www.newfangled.com/anticipating_changing_page_length_in_web_design). I’m also going to add a link to your article to the resources section of the newsletter. One thing that occurred to me as I wrote it was the relationship between users’ growing comfort or willingness to scroll and two particular technological developments: (1) the development of the mouse scroll wheel and now the notebook trackpad, and (2) the blog format (you can check out the article for some elaboration on that idea).
- Chris
@Chris G Thank you for the kind words
@Brad S Thank you
@Jo the fold was at 740px on our testing setup. I look to update the images on the post
@Matthew thank you, kind words
@misteraidan Always believe in your soul
@jrep you are right you can never know exactly where the fold is. I’d suggest ensure that the common sizes (720 to around 800) should have stuff be visible.
Here’s a great video to about how to be measure of the screen resolution of your users:
http://www.baekdal.com/articles/Fun/actual-browser-sizes-movie
@Mikal I agree the brands mentioned here can set the trend, and they do, if wasn’t for those guys we’d still be designing in web safe colours ;)
@Bret C Eyetracking adds a whole layer of extra exciting data to analyse!
@Dean thank you
@Al about convincing your boss, not sure I can help, but how much would a new laptop cost? $500? Maybe it’s worth upgrading him.
@Chris K
By default we set our test setup to force the viewable browser window to be 1024 x 740 px
@Christina thanks for the link to the Boxes and Arrows article. I hadn’t seen it but it is saying a lot of the same things we are. It’s great we can support the findings from AOL.
@Randy I agree, we are not saying place the important stuff where you want. The most important items should be placed above the fold, what we are saying is that you shouldn’t feel the need to cram everything in, let the content ‘breath’
@Andreas the participants can scroll the page so there is nothing fancy to calculate
@Jonathan wise words
@Jakob, thanks for commenting. I’d not come across the article by Tog. We wanted to write something that was easily digestable and as much as possible avoided jargon.
@ThatWebGuy I think you are wise to be cautious. Scrolling to get to the important content is a last resort. The most important stuff should be front and centre
@Bonita wise words
@Presanna we have done eyetracking on emails. As Randy said before people do scroll but not surprisingly the longer the email the less likely users are to read the stuff at the bottom. The key with emails is short paragraphs and clear headers.
@Toon stopping a sentence part way through seems a bit drastic. If you get the first paragraph right people will click. In radio they call it the ‘tease’. That is you set up the story rather than revealing all the content.
@Darren thanks for the kind words
@David it is an intuitive idea to have a little content poking above the fold but you’d be surprised about how many sites fail
@Ed it’s almost impossible to say exactly, we try and work it to be between 700 and 800px
@Simon no there is no actual defined page fold, there are some rules of thumb but almost every person will have it in a different place (both browser window and screen size factor)
@Mr D our set up was at 1024 x 740, we try and look at 700 – 800px depth
@Robert F I agree completely, the argument is an old one, but one that we and it seems others who have commented on this post face all the time in our working life. Yes the title is dramatic, and I really hope we’re better writers than Dan Brown ;)
@David T I agree the first page of content is critical. We are trying to argue that the cramming everything into the area above the fold reduces the impact of that content. In an ideal world we could fit everything in above the fold, but realistically that can never happen , having to scroll is not optimal, but it is not to ignored.
@Neil, re the scroll wheel, no research as such, but people do comment if the mouse we use doesn’t have one. We are seeing many more users familiar with trackpads rather than mice. Infact a trend we’ve seen recently among older users is that they have only ever used a laptops so are not good at using a mouse
@William, @Lisat2 a)users were recruited with a task in mind they needed to complete, be it booking a holiday or looking to book parking at an airport. They then completed the tasks unaided on the website.
b)The gaze plots are based on fixation length. I agree with your citation that this is no indication of cognitive process. But here we are not basing any assumptions on processing of any kind, we are making assumptions based on behaviour, i.e that people scroll when on websites. Design of websites should support scrolling.
c)The evidence here is based on over 800 tests
d)No assumption, this is an amalgam of all the studies we have completed.
I disagree this is ‘masquerading as fact without any real evidence’ in over 800 tests only on three occasions (8 users in total) have people not physically scrolled the page.
@Rob M I agree, we need to give our users more credit!
@Adam very good point about users with disabilities. Again, scrolling is not the optimal solution. All we are trying to say is that if there is a lot of content don’t cram it in
@Rick H. Kind words, thank you
@Matt F I agree, we have worked on a number of sites for automotive manufactures. We wouldn’t want to design for scrolling as much here.
@Jerome We are referring to the bottom position of the dark area used to show page height on the scrollbar. Yes, this was not the focus of 800 sessions. However the focus of every session was the user experience. If users weren’t scrolling and finding the stuff they wanted, we noted that. In effect we were looking for the evidence to disprove everything we’ve said here
Very nice comeback to Jakob: “We wanted to write something that was easily digestable and as much as possible avoided jargon.”
The really interesting thing about this is that I think the myth of the fold was most likely a self-reinforced notion, people regularly put horizontal lines right near the fold, which probably just kept making people think that it was “the fold” preventing them from scrolling, when really it was just their lines!
Great article though I’m not convinced the fold is not worth worrying about. It is something you should keep in mind for your overall information architecture on the page. Acknowledge this is the first thing people will see and make sure this space gives the user a reason to explore further. People won’t explore a page because they think there is certain information there they need to feel that by taking an action they will find what they want. The purpose of this above the fold area is to tell the visitor that upfront but keeping the fold in mind does not mean you avoid long pages just you acknowledge how they work.
Anyway the thing I did want to say was a massive thank you for alerting people to the dangers of horizontal bars. I’ve seen these artificial content ‘floors’ kill more potential conversions than Elvis has had fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
It is always nice to see other people’s testing back up your own observations.
Cheers.
However the one thing
From working on several sites with high volume of traffic –
He results reflect the truth, but not the whole truth. There are some situations that are hard to emulate in user testing. SEO traffic, landing on a branch page on a site they encounter for the first time hardly ever scrolls (for most sites, that is the majority of their traffic, although not always the ‘quality’ traffic). Advertisers know that all too well when it comes to banner clickthrough e.g. on video sharing sites and the same goes for video recommendations, links, etc.
Object above the fold in branch pages of sites that have a high percentage of SEO traffic have a CTR higher by factors than their counterparts below.
Great thought provoking article as evidenced by the robust dialog exchange. The site examples are in the article are B2C focused. I’m curious what your findings were with brands that target businesses, particularly those focusing on technology products. In my experience I found that B2B visitors do not like to spend time scrolling down a page and will jump off if they don’t find what they were searching for above the fold rather than take the time to scroll.
Great article! Very interesting insight.
Interesting, but all they quote is where people are scrolling/clicking, and not what they are actually buying. I wonder if that pair of shoes at the top outsells other stuff? I think money talks. Similar studies with landing pages tell us not only above the fold, but *single click* pages convert best. Is there more info? I’d like to hear more of the story, and I’m more than willing to admit my own bias.
Working in the eCommerce field it’s good to see that one does not necessarily have to cram all products into the tiny portion above the fold. After all, it’s 2009 and by now, not only geeks should be familiar with that funny little bar on the right.
Thanks Joe. I’ve rarely seen an author on a blog reply in such detail, to all posts :)
Really appreciate your effort!
@bigyaz Jakob is a very smart guy and has done more for the Usability cause than anyone. I met him once and he comes over much friendlier in person!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrjoe/3994448025/
@Mike R Absolutely, those horizontal lines across the page can be a real barrier
@Nathan C You are completely right, important stuff front and centre, trust people will scroll. I like the term ‘floor’ to describe the horizontal lines
@Uri we have the seen the same in user testing we’ve done on SEO landing pages. The stuff front and centre has to be the stuff people are searching for. It’s of course true that content above the fold will convert SEO, what we are saying is that users do scroll, that secondary content need no be crammed in and most important encourage scrolling!
@Denise B as for B2B focus, we’ve tested plenty of B2B sites and if anything they match B2C findings. Of course people don’t like to scroll to find the content they want but they do. See my comment to Uri above to help.
@Corey Thank you
@Peggy yes, stuff above the fold converts better, but think long tail, not everyone wants the same pair of shoes…
@Roman you are right. People move on. So does behaviour.
@Presanna I love to talk, what can I say!
Great article, experts I’ve discussed this issue with agree the fold is not the be all and end all of a web page, however from experience you need to design the page such that it is apparant that there is potentially something useful below the fold and to provide a scent.
The First Choice example is a typical one which detracts the user from viewing what may be relevant information further down. Design and layout are key to providing not only a visual queue to scroll down but to ensure there are no blocks such as the horizontal bar.
What I would add is that the type of website will lend itself to scrolling/not scrolling down as well as the method of entry. As mentioned above, not only is a site like BBC.co.uk well known as a brand, but users know it is an informational site thus you may be more inclined to scroll. In addition if I’m searching for a cheap flight, landing on a page, if I don’t see something relevant above the fold it is highly unlikey that I will scroll down. However if I’m viewing that same page after clicking a link from the homepage I am more likely to scroll.
That’s why with user testing in lab conditions it is vitally important to check your analytics tool to view where the page sits in the customer journey (i.e. % of first visit & referrer etc)
I’d just like to add that horizontal elements are not the primary design concern. What really matters is showing that sections run off the ‘page’. This is done nicely on this site by bordering the entire content. amazon.com and play.com also do it well by making sure that some of the content panels are bordered. This is what gives the feel that there is more. The example solution in this article has no such indicators and it is purely luck that the images are cut in half – indicating more.
@Depesh good points well made
@Richie A good point about the borders around items indicating more content below the fold. I’ll add a link direct to your comment on this.
Excellent article. Thanks for sharing the findings.
My comments were a little longer than a comment here in the box so I blogged them here – http://bit.ly/abovethefold.
To sum up, I love the thoughts around it being ok to scroll but I think that there’s a miss on what “Above the Fold” should really be used for. It’s not just the start of your content, it’s a hook and an elevator pitch for the rest of the page.
awesome article, very useful information, thanks.
Great article. I’ll be making frequent stops here. This reaffirms what I’ve been saying to my teams for years.
Thanks again.
As the designer of the First Choice Holidays page given as an example of how people will not scroll if they think the page has ended, let me say that it was those pesky graphic designers that did it! Ok, ok it was my fault…
I’m sure this’ll get lost in the sea of comments, but a small point about the screen resolution and where the ‘fold’ apeared to be:
You said around 700px, but in reality on a 1024×768 monitor the fold is closer to 600px. This takes in account for browser chrome (with a few toolbars, typically) and the Windows start bar / Mac header bar.
Other than that, agree with everything. The only problem is that many clients still don’t want to know, and take the fold as gospel.
Joe Leech’s analysis seems rather interesting (despite him looking like a young Shane McGowan). I can’t decide whether the observation about people looking at the scroll bar is circular reasoning or not though. If they scroll, they will look at the scroll bar, but if they don’t scroll they would not. It seems like you’d need to discount that finding as it’s too ambiguous in determining whether or not people have a propensity to scroll past the fold.
This doesn’t convince me in the slightest, the A/B test layouts in the heatmaps are not very similar and even seem to have different content. I cannot evaluate what the origial and changed content is because the images pages shown are obscured by the heatmaps.
The test environment needs to be described. Who was being tested, how many poeple, how old are they and how much expereince did they have using the web? Were you simply test ‘homepage-style’ layouts? How many layouts were tested?
The test should ideally consist of two content blocks, one above the fold and one for below the fold of equal size. These two blocks should be switched without internal layout of the block or content of the block being altered.
Each of these blocks should also have different layouts tested.
Heatmaps aren’t enough evidence, the test should include how many clicks each content block recieves in each position.
We also need track the time of the acquasistion of a click, does less content above the fold mean it takes longer for people to click on an item, and does this mean it’s harder to find because they have to scroll?
A shop might want to promote a single item for a week but a news site has numerous articles almost of equal importance that need to be emphasied. Tests need to be placed in context.
Frankly this is not a very scientific test and there are a number of agents which could have been tested in a rudemantary closed system (ie not redefinable production sites) to give better results.
All that you seem to be doing is delaying the paradox of choice. Sometimes these choices are more effeciently served first so decisions can be made quickly.
I will be keeping links above the fold for now.
This is an excellent piece of research, I love articles like this, we often have debates in our team here about the way content should be designed and It’s always been my gut instinct that trying to cram everything above the fold is counter productive.
I know when working on our initial site design concept we talked about designing the site in a way which meant the user never had to scroll, I really didn’t like that approach as I felt it meant the content suffered and that ultimately is the core concern of the design, to deliver the content in an easy to read manor.
I like having studies like this to support my argument, thanks!
Rob
@Neil A: Thank you
@Josh H: I agree with you, there simply isn’t enough space here to go into what should or shouldn’t be above the fold, but yes the more important stuff should be above the fold
@Jason: Now worries :)
@Michael R: Everyone knows it’s true but it’s great to be able to gather some evidence
@Jonathan: Great work on the redesign. Blame DJ for the initial one ;)
@Tom: It’s not lost! It’s a tricky thing to exactly say where the fold lies for each and every set-up.
Fight the good fight, I use this evidence with clients yet it’s still and issues that doesn’t go away. See you at BUG sometime soon.
@Drazen: I’ve never been likened to Shane MacGowan before. Not sure what to make of that, hopefully I have better teeth and drink a little less.
Users look at the scroll bar and then make the decision to scroll, the scroll bar is a cue that there is more content below the fold not an indication of scrolling. Many of our users did not use the scroll bar to scroll but instead used the scroll wheel on the mouse.
@Alistair: I completely agree. Of course page position effects the number of clicks a item gets. Above the fold items get more clicks than below. That stands to reason.
We are simply saying people scroll, the fold is a barrier but not an insurmountable one as many believe it to be, content should not be squeezed into the top of the screen. Squeezing content above the fold is not a replacement for clear, well laid out design that encourages exploration.
You are perfectly correct to keep your important links above the fold not just for now but for good.
@Robert R: Thank you for the kind words. Dogmatic design rules like ‘content should be above the fold’ and ‘no more than three clicks’ to content and often a poor substitute for the craft skills in our profession.
Couldn’t you guys have come up with this a few years earlier? It would have saved us all lots of meetings and many grey hairs. :)
Do people still think that users don’t scroll? If they do, that’s not the impression I get. I do get asked quite a lot to put certain calls to action ‘above the fold’ but the fact remains, calls to action that can be seen without scrolling are going to get more eyes on them than calls to action that can’t be seen without scrolling. No amount of user testing is going to disprove that.
It’s a matter of prioritising information.
Thanks! Will definitely be useful for future client discussions.
Great discussion. This eye-tracking is definitley going to dis-prove a lot of myths on how the user actually behaves when browsing the web.
This is a really great article, disproving a very popular myth.
For me, scrolling is just part of modern internet use, particularly when using small netbook/laptop/phone screens. It is perhaps notable that scrolling is made very easy in modern day internet use by browsing technology that include scroll balls/wheels and easy trackpad/touchscreen scrolling.
Keep up the good work!
So… what about SERPs, or did I miss something here? I can’t remember anyone ever really talking about how they thought that having information below the fold hurt the websites usability… only search engine visibility, and this has been documented across the web day in and day out. I agree I don’t think it’s the end all be all of page design and usability, but it’s a definate must for SERPs. Even in your designs that you use as examples… they present content above the fold as to define what their pages are in reference to. I think it’s important to state this so that people don’t get the wrong idea…
Nice article… Thanks – Ed
Thanks for an article that supports what I have been telling clients now for years. The biggest problem is the borders around content that makes it look like there is nothing below. Many Marcom-type sites have that and it’s such an easy mistake to avoid.
The only cases where I recommend worrying about the fold are when there is some sort of in-page action. For example: drag & drop or a form with immediate feedback.
I think yes, you will get more eyeballs on calls to action above the fold but in this day and age, come on, people scroll! They always have done. When the majority of users are immersed in mobile web then the design and scrolling issue will be a major topic for discussion.
I have had many clients that would rather sacrifice the great look of their site’s clean lines and white space to cram stuff in above the fold. It drives me crazy sometimes, so I wrote about it here: http://bit.ly/1n5cS4.
Thanks for the article.
A point that’s worth mentioning is how easy it has become to scroll: ever since the wheel mouse came out was at least 7 years ago!) scrolling has been easy. The next big leap will be Apple’s iPhone finger swipe transferred onto Microsoft’s surface, i.e. gestural scrolling and no mouse anymore.
And yes! obviously there has to be somme indication of more content further down the page (independant of resolution and the miriad of client screens out there). I mean above and beyond scroll bar positioning, which is something only geeks understand (speaking as a geek, of course).
And no! nobody (except your mum and participants in a user test) scroll just for the sake of it, to see if there’s content on your page.
Oh! and by the by, I couldn’t comment in IE7 (on XP pro SP2) – there are coding errors. Fire whoever coded this!
A point that’s worth mentioning is how easy it has become to scroll: ever since the wheel mouse came out (was at least 7 years ago!) scrolling has been easy. The next big leap will be Apple’s iPhone finger swipe transferred onto Microsoft’s surface, i.e. gestural scrolling and no mouse anymore.
And yes! obviously there has to be somme indication of more content further down the page (independant of resolution and the miriad of client screens out there). I mean above and beyond scroll bar positioning, which is something only geeks understand (speaking as a geek, of course).
And no! nobody (except your mum and participants in a user test) scroll just for the sake of it, to see if there’s content on your page.
Oh! and by the by, I couldn’t comment in IE7 (on XP pro SP2) – there are coding errors. Fire whoever coded this!
Three points:
1) Your thesis is completely wrong, which explains why I didn’t get this far down the page and didn’t post.
2) I keep seeing people direct selling fitness manuals, how to succeed in business and so on, using pages on the web that require a lot of scrolling. They all have too much in common to be coincidence. There are one or more direct marketers out there on a percentage who are putting their money where your research is.
3) I’m an amateur at this lark, but I’m now looking at the whole thing differently. It’s about involving someone above the fold so that they want to scroll down. To help them, you remove barriers like horizontal lines and position content that says, “Look there’s more here”. Rule of thumb, but hey, I’ve got to start somewhere.
Malcolm 12boxes.com
Now that people have such large monitors and resolutions (I’ve got a Mac with a resolution 0f 1920 x 1200) I’ve been wondering how large people actually have their browsers. For example, I don’t have my browser set to fill my screen, I usually have 3 or 4 browser windows open at a time, and resize them randomly depending on the content of the site(s) I’m on. So, just because resolution sizes are bigger, are browser windows actually bigger? Would be interesting to know.
I love the topic – very interesting. I tend to try and design sites so that everything is interesting, and get people into a place where they want to explore.
As always, content is king, but it must be usable, compelling and well-designed.
I run user testing my clients (some of which are in the Alexa 100). I’ve been doing it for 19 years now (yes, software too).
It is a useful tool, but it cannot predict certain behaviours, situations and states of mind. The most common source of traffic on most large scale sites is search traffic. The most common entry point is a leaf (item) page, not the homepage.
Best chances are (unless you’re an Amazon or Ebay brandwise):
1. User does not know what the site is.
2. User doesn’t care about your brand just yet.
3. User is not paying much attention and is willing to click away very quickly.
All of the above are hard to impossible to emulate when user testing. Stats of site that were designed with knowledge of scrolling obstacles contradict results of these user tests.
In the comments there’s much wishful thinking from designers ‘ that’s what I’ve been telling my clients for years’. Or assumptions like ‘c’mon people know how to scroll’. The truth is, it’s not that straight forward and designers should be greatful for it – after all, we’re paid to think.
@ ben: There will always be meetings, and I suspect more grey hairs but I’ll get working on the time machine now :)
@ Dave Ellis: We’re so lucky working in this field as we get to see users in action every day. For people who don’t it’s understandable that they worry that users don’t scroll. We get asked about it all the time. You’re absolutely right, it is all about prioritising information – the most important stuff should be front and centre
@ Dave: Thanks – glad you found it useful
@ Adrian: Thanks for commenting. I think it’s got to the point where the discussion is more interesting than the article ;) The eye tracking does add a great dimension to user testing
@ Charlie: Great comment – scrolling is just part of modern internet use and made easy by supportive technology. I’d almost go as far as to say that it feels like a natural movement to me now. Thanks for the kind posting
@ Ed: Thanks Ed, interesting comment
@ Sophie Henry: Exploration below the fold can be discouraged by poorly designed elements. You’re so right, it is an easy mistake to avoid and an easy thing to put right. Great points re: drag & drop and immediate form feedback. Thanks for making them
@ Fran Jeanes: Thanks Fran. As you say in your article, targeted long copy is a winner
@ Alex B: Good points. The iPhone finger swipe is even fun to do, speaking as a geek. Perhaps I should downgrade that to ‘is a very rewarding way to scroll’. Thanks for the bug tip, we’re on it
@ Malcolm Sheath: “Look, there’s more here”. Sums it all up very nicely
@ Stewart Sear: Terrific point which resonates with my own use of browser windows – and I guess other people with a high resolution set up. Would make for an interesting study…..
Thanks guys. Finally some research and strong rationale to put this issue to bed.
Great article. I have always suspected that.
What I seen in several cases is that a lot of people don´t necessarily scroll content inside a scrollable box on the page (like a widget with the latest news for example)
If anyone needs evidence that people will scroll, this webpage has to be it!!! :-)
Great study. I even SCROLLED down to read the comments ;)
@ Chris Lorensson: Content absolutely is king. Good content is what makes people explore. And then they will scroll. Thanks Chris
@ Uri: Thanks for reminding us that it’s not always straight forward. We just wanted to share what we have seen in our user testing – that people scroll. And that there are design tips you can employ to encourage scrolling
@ James Warfield: Thanks for your kind words
I scrolled to the very bottom and read most of the comments. This is a great weapon against those pesky PGMs that keep saying lets keep everything above the fold.
I always knew that people would scroll. Blogs scroll and people read those right? As a test I added a little button on my site that scrolls for days. It says “Magic Button” on it and out of 4K unique hits daily I get just under 3K in clicks on that button. It goes to a page that says “I knew you would click that button”, an shows an ad. It’s an easy way to test.
I’m not going to post the site – Not looking for promotion -Just want to comments on a great article.
Mike
Great article.
May I introduce this article to my readers on my blog with translation into Japanese? (I’m a Japanese webmatser.) I will promise to give you a credit.
@Jonas: we see that to – especially when the box is too small for the amount of content presented/required. Thanks for commenting
@Mike:in black & white :-)
@ Michael Daehn: thanks very much
@Mike: Pass the site on – I’d like to see the Magic Button for myself! Thanks
@ Kenichi Suzuki: we would be very happy for you to introduce this article to your readers. Thank you very much for your interest in this article, and for your kind words
Interesting poll regarding my earlier point about web browser sizes
http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2144487/
Some of the conclusions in your article are too general. Visitors will not always scroll.
We tried to make it more clear when users want to scroll and when they don’t want to scroll. And how you can make them scroll with playing with what is visible above the page fold.
It depends on the type of page and the type of website.
http://webusability-blog.com/page-fold-fact-or-fiction/
A respectful and friendly critique:
Very interesting findings; however, I’m not exactly sure what to do with them. All this proves is that people scroll, but doesn’t speak to the impact on metrics/conversions. Naive designers, upon hearing this, could be led to take design liberties at the cost of their stakeholders business needs; thereby, comprising their project.
The missing link is a statistically significant quantitative (A/B) test. Until then, it’s very difficult to come to any truly insightful conclusions.
-isaacw
@Isaac… YES! Thank You! Finally someone else that recognizes this… Design doesn’t mean squat without conversions! It doesn’t matter how the site is designed until you can do some A/B testing to see how your niche demographic searches the web and reads your website. Every demographic is different, and I here to tell you that relevant content “above the fold” is the winner in the search engine wars!
-EdC
@Karl Gilis: Thanks for the link to your article. We are saying many of the same things – the most effective place for content is above the fold, and make sure your design communicates to people that there is more for them to see below. We see that visitors will scroll if the design supports them to.
@Isaac Weinhausen: Thanks, friendly is what we were after.
For all the naive designers out there (although I haven’t met many) business critical content should go above the fold! Just don’t feel the pressure to cram all your content in above the fold
Joe and Fiz,
Great article. I think what’s important is that the area above the fold needs to be designed well, even if the users do scroll. This area gives users the important “first impression.” It says a lot about a web site’s elegance and branding.
I have some additional thoughts that’s too long to paste here. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
You guys are way off base on the first part of the article concerning the “page fold.” If I went to a website “looking” for something specific or find the site interesting from previous visit, “ect ect” surely page folds have no effect. But if I am a new visitor, am clueless to the contents of the site, or am uninterested, obviously a page fold is needed to grab my attention and the likeliness to stay there longer (therefore seeing more content.) After that I won’t mind the “long, long” scrolling as you called it. That part you are right about. ( and most of the rest )
@Jin I really like the article, there are some great tips in there, good work.
@Unclosedmind Yes you are correct, the article simple says users scroll, we’ve offered some tips to encourage scrolling. No designer in their right mind would put the main content below the fold.
Hi guys,
Some really nice points in your article and good to see them supported by some user testing info.
I wrote an article a few months ago about the fold, that also presented the argument that using the ‘above the fold web design’ principle is not really that relevant in today’s web design.
http://www.360innovate.co.uk/blog/2009/05/infatuated-with-above-the-fold-web-design-by-john-ellis/
Cheers,
John.
Interesting and informative read. This is exactly what needs to be explained to a majority of clients who just want everything above the “fold”. There has to be scrolling if the site is large enough (content-wise) and that’s why there is this thing called vertical scroll bars!
You are dead right that important stuffs should go above the fold and other contents should just peek through the bottom to give a hint of “Hey I’m down here too!”.
Thanks for the article and lets’ have some more of these.
I have to say that while I agree with you in that people will scroll, I also believe (strongly) in making sure that the most relevant content/links are above the fold.
I have watched heatmaps on client sites for years (been doing this since 1995) and click activity is clearly much higher above the fold not to mention a reduction in bounce rate. To reference sites such as Amazon, BBC or the New York Times is not a fair assessment for the average site owner that might be reading this post. They do NOT have the same credibility as these other sites. When a visitor goes to Amazon, they already know to keep looking until they find what they are looking for because it will be there.
For a typical website, potentially paying to market their website (PPC, SEO or whatever), it is important to capture a visitors attention BEFORE they click the back button and become another “bounce” statistic. This is done most effectively by placing the most relevant content above the fold…
@John E That’s a great article
@Bhupal thank you
@Joe C Yes I agree, we are not suggesting the most important content be below the fold, that’s just plain silly. We’ve done some work on this with a big e-commerce company and sure enough users do scroll if they don’t find what they are looking for above the fold.
@Joe Leech Ideally they find everything they need above the fold. If there is information they need below the fold, ideally there is a button above the fold to get there (just as if the below-the-fold info was another page altogether. Yes, I know, I know, not always possible, but I can dream, can’t I?
Brilliant article and well-demonstrated research, thank you. This is a perennial issue I face with clients, and some other designers. This is once of the issues that clients find easy to understand, so they never let go of it! Meanwhile, there’s loads of other issues that will be far more worthy of their attention.
Also, great to see how you show that user interface design AND graphic design contribute to encouraging people to scroll!
Thanks again.
hi~ that was what i was looking for the evidence of my design. I designed http://www.gangnam.go.kr/ site in Korea..
how you think? would you mind give any advice for that site? I would be really appriciate.
Excellent evidence to back up the reoccurring debate I have frequently with clients on this subject. Many thanks.
Have you done or seen quantitative A/B testing across multiple user acquisition focused sites to see if your qualitative tests hold up? Or maybe others have done this? eye tracking and qualitative studies are one thing, but every company should still do quantitative A/B or multivariate testing to see what converts users to buy/sign-up/engage, etc. ecommerce sites with a lot of products (Amazon, Play.com) and news sites with a lot of content (NY Times, BBC) are going to have pretty different results than sites in other many other industries.
Excellent article, backs up what I’ve discovered als with my clients.
Great article as it confirms my thinking that people like myself like scrolling to where the gems in the content are. I don’t care if it is above or below the fold. I also like scrolling better than accessing the content on another page just for the sake of keeping everything on one page above the fold. I tweeted about this: @wschumac
What’s the point of this article? You are saying ‘the fold is important, but people do scroll down’. Anything we don’t know?
Fantastic article. Takes old knowledge on design to current level.
Excellent work. The eye tracker work is hard to argue with.
I’m a bit late in reading it but I’ll be sending this article to anyone who mentions the word “fold” to me. Thanks!
Thanks for this wonderful post… Really worth reading.
-Deepu
What I reckon would be interesting to know, is the number of computers that don’t have scroll wheels, or some other kind of pseudo-scrolling method. Web stats tell us things like screen res, what OS, which browser versions, and so on, pity they can’t indicate the scrolling capabilities.
Larger monitor sizes are becoming more the norm now. But I wonder how many people do NOT have scroll wheels which makes scrolling less easy. Sometimes it surprises me how many people still use 800×600, or the occasional oddball who uses 640×480! Even handhelds have better resolutions than that.
For some things I think Above-the-fold does matter. A good example of the “above the fold” point is the number of people who place Adsense ads on their websites to make money, but say they never make much from it. A key element to success is placing the ads above the fold, generally right at the top of the page, so they’re the first thing people see. (Plus tailoring the ad appearance, as much as you can, not to look like an ad, but as if it is just part of the normal page content). When I did that consistently through my personal sites, my earnings quadrupled, perhaps even more. The other important thing is good SEO to get the traffic!
What about scrolling horizontally? Ther are a lot of sites that don’t handle width very well.
Any feedback on that in your research?
Amazon actually cares A LOT about the fold, as you can see… everything important is above the fold. I don’t get your point. Obviously the fold is extremely important ?! any A/B testing at large scale would prove you that it’s obvious
Larger monitors may be becoming the norm on desktops, and even laptops. But people are using these things less and less. Now we’re using smart phones, Wii’s & DS’s, netbooks, and other devices that may or may not resemble traditional computers to gain access to HTML/HTTP content.
Google has an interesting tool showing the statistical likelihood of what users would see before the fold.
http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/introducing-google-browser-size.html
The point of this article seems to be “Put the most important things above the fold, because first impressions and easy access matter, but don’t freak out about putting _everything_ above the fold.
I’ve noticed another, tangentially related design detail out there “in the wild” but haven’t seen the research that supports it: In-site toolbars at the bottom of the page don’t go all the way to the edges of the screen. For example, Facebook’s “presence” bar has 15px of left and right padding.
I suspect that this prevents the bar from appearing to be part of the browser and thus being ignored by users. I’m curious if anyone’s seen research to support this design meme?
@pascal
You’ve answered your own question – ‘Everything important is above the fold’.
That’s true, but there is also a lot more content below it. The point that is being made is don’t try and cram *everything* above it.
We’ve put our own two cents in on this on our blog. The long and short is that while people scroll, and it doesn’t matter in the way people think, it does matter what people find in the first split second they get to your site. Sites like Amazon have designs that work because of who they are. Anyhow, our post on the matter: http://bit.ly/6I1rvl
aka: Abovethafolditus
Description: Cram everything above the fold so that it’s all junked up and cluttered as hell.
@Rusty: Exactly.
Abovethefolditis is the symptom. Failure to choose the ONE thing that the page is about is the cause. Advertising is perhaps the greatest contributor to that failure.
I don’t think anybody is arguing that below the fold content is never seen or that users are too lazy to scroll if they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for. The first thing your users see in the view port however, should always be a consideration.
Would it be smarter of Amazon for instance, to use that massive sale ad on their home page or do that thing where they show the last set of products I browsed? Which is more likely to result in an impulse buy if I had just intended to use the home page for its global nav or search bar?
For the love of all that’s holy, don’t cram all your content to avoid scrolling, but don’t take to the opposite extreme and pretend that the fold is irrelevant. If it was, we could devote it completely to ad space and make people scroll for the global nav without repercussions.
I respect data but I think this may be a classic forest for the trees example of confusing ‘duh’ for discovery. Yes, after people have loaded a page and they don’t find the content they wanted, they will scroll for it. Does that prove that it’s the best experience you can offer or merely that people will tolerate a little bit of effort to get to what they want?
And yes, when you ask people in a group they’re being paid to be a part of whether they think scrolling is a hassle they’re not likely to want to be labeled ‘the difficult one’ no matter how much you make it clear you want their honest opinion. Especially in the UK if your comedians are lampooning real cultural phenomenons.
Sorry but I think logic trumps data on this one. I do think eyeball tracking is neat and useful for studying layout flow but it doesn’t prove half the things people seem to think it does.
Likewise, whether something should or shouldn’t go above the fold isn’t a true/false scenario to be tested out in a lab or bandied about as an iron clad best practice. It’s a qualitative evaluation of what’s most important for users to have access to or see right away in light of your specific goals and your specific users’ wants/needs. That’s what design is all about.
Great article! In our experience the client is always very concenred to put as much info as possible above the fold; it seems to be ‘the thing’ right now. It is always very useful to find testing evidence to show the good and bad of this approach.
@Al:
If your boss is the only person using your website, you are stuck.. if not, explain to him(or her) that other users do not, in any way shape or form, browse on the same machine as him, with the same screen size as him, or in the same way as him.. There are too many variables out there to design based on one person’s ways… even if he/she is the “boss”.
B
The solution would be to add some content above the fold compelling enough to make visitors scroll down to find out more.
Part of the solution is to have compelling content above the fold. Part of the solution is to design your page so that it doesn’t look like it ends at the fold.
I always get clients that don’t want their websites to scroll, like that is at all feasible. With the surge of mobile browsers (e.g., iPhone), site designers have to evolve, and simply packing everything above the fold is a ridiculous solution. I try to explain to them the sea of different resolutions out there, and that designing a website for their monitors isn’t how it’s done. It’s surprising how many don’t fully understand the fluidity of the web. But I digress.
It’s nice to have some empirical evidence behind something I had always deep downed believed to be true. A shame that when Nielsen original came out with that discovery, people chose to adopt a “baby with the bathwater” approach. I’m glad you did a much more robust study and have provided that data for the public. It doesn’t change the way I design, but it may perhaps sway those stubborn clients that are unwilling to shed archaic design theories.
Great job!