This is a blog post I wrote for a work blog at Sky, about ‘the fold’. And seeing as it’s quite a lot of words for me I thought I might as well stick it up here too …
The page fold ‘chat’ represents a conversation that seemingly has to take place at least once per project, when it comes to designing web pages. The concept itself came from the world of newspapers where broadsheets were often sat on the shelves folded in half, due to their size. As a result, editors knew that if there was content that you wanted your readers to see, or to attract them to your paper, it had to sit at the top end of the front page – or ‘above the fold’. This concept has been, quite understandably, carried through to the digital world of websites.
In the early days of the web the advice was always to avoid long scrolling pages, from both a usability and an experience point-of-view. However, times have changed. Scrolling on sites are no longer a deciding factor as to whether users will ‘bounce’ straight off your site or not. User tests also show that users do scroll and they do engage with content both ‘below the fold’ and also right at the bottom of the page. In fact from a users’ perspective, scrolling is often preferred when the alternative is pagination. For one long page, as opposed to five short ones, there’s no wait to load the next page when the only new content loading in may be minimal compared to the page elements wrapped-around it. From the users’ content consumption perspective you can pull up this page and read it later, when you have no web connection for instance (e.g. on the tube). Your content is all there, from start to finish.
From a navigation perspective, hardware manufacturers have also adapted devices to this trend. Mice have scroll-wheels; touch-pads have gestures that help you skip down a page and right to the bottom of a page. Even some of the most basic laptops are bringing these features in – albeit not as elegantly as Apple. And from an interface perspective, there are links that jump users to content or jump them back up / down a page.
So users are open to coming down the page, and technology is helping them to do it. But now there’s a question of WHY? Why would the user scroll down the page? That’s where we come in. We have to be creating and publishing great and relevant content. We have to present this content in a way that draws users down the page. It’s no good hiding content in a block of text. Users scan pages and this behaviour becomes even stronger as users scroll, as their attention begins to drop. If they scroll through a couple of pages of thick copy – or even worse, thick copy and irrelevant stock photography – they won’t go further. They’re making assumptions that (a) the rest of the page is the same or (b) I don’t have enough time to find what I need in there. The prevalence of clever search (Google) and social media services like Twitter and Facebook means a lot of users will turn away from sites who make research difficult and find their answers elsewhere.
The page fold issue actually leads to a much larger discussion that involves business goals, page goals, site goals, the integration of online and offline channels, information design, and so on. A key issue is information design. Each type of content you present on the page should, ideally, be presented in its own way. Where possible, be visual. And often, when you start designing information you start to get rid of redundant or duplicated content. There may be a level of detail that isn’t required on this page, right now. On longer pages, as users scroll, it’s up to the various content and design elements to ‘pick up’ their interest and keep them engaged. I’ve just seen that Mashable are actually now loading in images as users scroll down the page. I’m not sure what the reason is behind this decision but what it does do is it draws / keeps attention on the page as users scroll down. At the moment this is still quite new but it may, one day – or depending on the type of page it is, become an annoyance. Anyhow, in the ideal world we should think of crafting a long page (in fact, any page) as a type of storytelling. And in recent times, the prevalence of ‘fat footers’ and designed footers help keep a users’ interest right to the end, and the more interested a user is, the more time they’ll give to consuming your content.
So the ‘above the fold’ issue is now just a myth. Well. Not quite. Although research does show that people do explore further down a page, this depends on a number of things. How the page is laid out and designed, what messaging is displayed ‘above the fold’ – which kind of acts as a ‘shop window’ for content underneath; but also what tasks the users have come to do on your site. Some tasks inherently make users more willing to ‘dig’ and explore whereas others they’re looking for answers straight away. So although putting content ‘below the fold’ no longer means it’s never going to be seen, there is still a content prioritisation effort needed to decide which bits of content should be placed at the top of the page, and which can be pushed further down, placed elsewhere, or removed altogether.
Finally, the irony of this post itself being quite long hasn’t escaped me … but still, you got to the end didn’t you?
