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October 08, 2009, 1 Comment

The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing

From CXPartners:

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.

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Avatar of M. Jackson Wilkinson

I'm M. Jackson Wilkinson, a technologist, designer, speaker, educator, and writer in San Francisco. I recently moved from Washington, DC to work as a Senior Product Designer at LinkedIn, and am happy to take your feedback. I'm from Philadelphia, went to Bowdoin College in Maine, root for the Phillies, and love to sing.

Comments

  1. Karl Gilis
    October 21st, 2009

    Whether users want to scroll or not, depends from situation to situation. Visitors will not always scroll. So it's not just a myth.

    It depends on the type of page and the type of website.

    A nice article illustrating when users want to scroll (and when not) can be found at http://webusability-blog.com/page-fold-fact-or-fiction/. It also gives some good examples of good use of the area above the page fold.

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