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Silas Notes

The Fold Versus The Scroll

Posted by Jacque on July 24, 2007
2

The fold… that mysterious moving target that webmasters around the globe wrestle with daily. Their challenge; to make sure that all branding, navigation and primary content is located at the top 600 pixels of their web sites so that visitors won’t miss any important messaging. This practice presumably based upon the assumption that web users don’t scroll.

A recent article published on Boxesandarrows.com called “Blasting the Myth of the Fold“, author Milissa Tarquini challenges this notion. Tarquini quotes recent studies which have found that most web users not only scroll, but they will scroll and respond to features located at the bottom of a website. The key to successful web layout is therefore not to cram your content above the fold, but to write compelling content that will entice the user to want to scroll to read more.

  1. This is mentioned in the comments of the Boxes and Arrows post, but I think it’s cool as well.

    A new tool called FoldSpy helps you visualize where the fold is for the majority of your users.

    Of course that is the rub, the fold is different for everyone.

    Posted by Jacob Jul 24
  2. Pingback: Josue’s Blog 2.0 » Tarquini : Blasting the Myth of the Fold

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