Above or below the fold: users don’t care!

By Lucas at January 24, 2012 | 3:25 pmPrint

I’m pretty sure many of you have asked or being asked this: is the content below the fold being read? Are my visitors scrolling down the page? How can I squeeze in all the content above the fold so that nothing is missed out? Well, hopefully this short post will answer some of the above.

So let’s start by describing what “The Fold” concept is:

Basically is where the Newspaper is folded, dividing the page into 2 main segments: above- and below-the-fold. Using the same principle in the online marketing means that every single element users can observe without scrolling is above-the-fold, and everything else below-the-fold.

However, many people have transferred this concept into ‘let’s squeeze in as much as content as possible above the fold’ and I think it shouldn’t be like this. For instance imagine you’re walking in a shopping centre looking for a new pair of shoes, how do the window designs looks like? They tease you by showing the best shoes they have and encourage you to get in the store to see more. A website homepage plays the same role; it should show you a snapshot of the site and encourage you to find out more [find out more = more time spent on site therefore a better likelihood to convert].

So why would you want to give away everything at once by squeezing in as much as possible because of the belief content below the fold will be missed out ? If you are putting all your content above the fold you may be encouraging your visitors not to explore further, thus closing the path to conversion!

OK, but you need data to back this up right?

76% of the page-views were scrolled to some extent and 22% of the page-views were scrolled all the way to the bottom – ClickTale Scrolling Report
80% of the time spent on a page is focused above the fold, nevertheless people do scroll down if they page encourage scrolling – Scrolling and Attention, Nielsen report

Users can read long, scrolling pages faster than paginated ones – The impact of Paging vs Scrolling on Reading Online Text Passages

Now that you’ve reached the bottom of the page you deserve the key takeaways

You don’t have to squeeze everything into the top of your page
Don’t give it all at once, tease and encourage to explore your awesome content
Scrolling down the page is very common thing but hey, be smart and show some signs that indicates more content is below the fold
Scrolling is the next click, it can be an indication of engagement