For work I was looking into placing items below the fold for a few sites. I was favouring the fat footer approach, and the more research I did the more it seemed the best approach. Ha! But wait. Isn’t everything you put below the fold destined for eternal user neglect and a lifetime of digital ‘what-ifs’? Well. I’ve always found this concept that users don’t scroll a bit mystifying. Even analysing my own web behaviour I find scrolling second nature, particularly with the proliferation of mice with scroll wheels (over 90% I think I read somewhere according to Logitech). With the rising popularity of long web pages like blogs, twitter pages, online newspapers, users are getting used to looking for content down the page. The way your site looks visually can also help entice users further down the page. If users scroll down one or two screens and just see solid blocks of text they will probably decide it’s too much ‘work’ to do and leave. However, good use of section titles, type face, labelling, graphics and colours would engage users sufficiently to keep them scrolling down. Of course, as long as users think they can find what they’re looking for they’ll keep looking.