The Myth of Scrolling

There’s an old inaccurate belief that people don’t scroll web pages. However, there are good reasons to believe this urban myth simply isn’t true.

Where is “the fold”?

So far, the common recommendation has been to put everything near and dear to your heart above “the fold.” The big question is where “the fold” is and whether the content below it is lost. Milissa Tarquini talks about the concept of the fold in Blasting the Myth of the Fold.

Did They Scroll?

A recent post at the Eyetracking Research blog ran an interesting report (PDF). They plotted a “heat map” of what people paid attention to on a rather long HTML email. The question they pose is, Did they scroll?

“It is a myth that everything has to be above the fold, but data has shown that clutter and bad design will greatly reduce scrolling and visual hotspots below the fold. […]

Most people are scrolling, which is good.”

Note the phrase “bad design will greatly reduce scrolling and visual hotspots below the fold”. You can also see from the heatmap how users’ attention withered away the more they scrolled because content wasn’t engaging. Yet the “Tax Center” piece at the very bottom drew a lot of attention (few people would treat tax advice as unimportant).

Copy quality makes you or breaks you

No doubt, what you put above the fold gets the most exposure, so you must make sure your copy is lean. By and large, though, it’s not the fold you should focus on, but quality of content. A bad copy ruins everything, be it above or below the fold.

For example, the tested page—technically, an email—had two large graphics with bland explanations of what they represented: “Watch…”, “Are you ready…”

“The majority of viewers did not get a cohesive message which included a specific sales pitch or call to action. If this page layout is maintained, improved copywriting is vital to improving read through in each of the top section of the page.”

By the way, the report also has some interesting observations on the optimal number of columns.