Above the fold: a rule to be broken

Since the earliest days of the newspaper industry, the front page of the paper was laid out to get the top stories above the fold. Inside the paper, was a similar situation. Savvy ad execs like Don Draper knew that if a quarter page ad fell in the middle of that crease, readership would plummet. The fold could make you or break you. These days, this line of thinking has carried over into the Internet. There remains an abiding notion that an optimum website design lives above the fold (the depth of your browser window.) But even this is starting to change.


A six-year study has called this “rule” into question. 800 people observed in clinical settings showed that the scroll bar is very much a part of how they peruse a site. Only 3 people in the study failed to scroll deeper than the browser window’s depth. The online “fold,” it would appear, is not some impenetrable barrier. What does that mean for how we design future websites? It means a lot.

Less is more
Interestingly, the study indicates that the less you have above the fold, the more likely someone is to scroll down your page. And consider this, a cluttered home page that tries to squeeze everything into the real estate above the fold may be making your site less inviting. So think outside the box. Spread out. Let your site breathe.

The advent of Smart phones
With the arrival of the iPhone, Web design has radically started to evolve. Because of this phenomenon, sites are beginning to use less Flash and more Java script. Also, fonts are growing bigger, bolder and cleaner. People with smart phones are all about scrolling. No fold exists.

Less clicking. More sticking.
Web architects today are designing sites to require less drilling down and more scrolling down. The fewer clicks that are required to access information, the better.

Balance
All of this, of course, needs to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. After all, even the old newspaper men printed some of their news stories beneath the fold. They just wanted to make sure the top headlines were visible when the papers got stuffed into the news stands. A website design is no different. No matter how deep the page goes, you want to populate the top of the page with your lead items. Your secondary items can go below the fold. Prioritize.

Visuals are important
As you design deeper Web pages, avoid the temptation to stick all of the visuals up top. Populate the area below the fold with something other than gray matter. The more visuals there are, the more people read the content. It’s a fact.

Take your next site to the next level. Don Draper would be proud of you.