In my every day work I need to listen to our clients and their requirements.
I need to get to the bottom of their business in order to create a perfect website for their needs, their business needs and, what is most important, for their customers’ needs.
But there is one requirement which most of our happy clients want: “Not too much scrolling please, because users wouldn’t know they need to scroll down, please move that content up above the fold…”
That’s the requirement I don’t get and I ask why do you think users wouldn’t know they need to scroll?
We live in 2017. Back, in mid-90s people weren’t used to scrolling.
These days it’s natural to scroll.
There is no “fold.” There, I said it!
Let’s stop the fold madness right now. The web world has evolved and so have users.
You don’t have to squeeze everything into the top of your homepage. To make sure that people will scroll, you need to follow certain design principles and provide content that keeps your visitors interested.
Give the user a reason to scroll and they will scroll. Yes, above the fold is important and will still get the most of attention but that does not mean everything needs to be at the top of the page. Type of content will decide whether your page is worth reading or not.
Some research findings prove that people scroll:
- Usability studies by the Software Usability Research Laboratory’s show that users can read long, scrolling pages faster than paginated ones. Their studies confirm that people are accustomed to scrolling.
- Chartbeat, a data analytics provider, analysed data from 2 billion visits and found that “66% of attention on a normal media page is spent below the fold.”
- Luke Wroblewski provides small snippets of stats and advice on scrolling behaviour
- Don’t miss Life below 600px, a very interesting article on the page fold.
So, don’t worry, users do scroll. It’s how we have learned to interact with our devices!
Sylwia Lukjanowska is a Creative Thinker and Web Developer at Happy Creative, a full service marketing and creative agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire.
