This popular web design trend encourages designers and developers to cram tons of information into the top half of the first page of a website. The fear is that visitors will never scroll down to find the rest of the goodies on the page. Could this be true?
Traditional “above the fold” designs reflected the fact that only the top half of the front page of a newspaper could be seen in the news stand display. Folks would buy the paper based on the headline, and then flip it to see what else was happening.
International design firm, Huge Inc. (http://www.hugeinc.com) decided to test the ATF idea. They tested almost 50 participants over three days and discovered that scrolling down a web page is practically automatic! They tested designs with and without downward facing arrows, and with complete and incomplete info above the fold – and concluded that between 91% and 92% of people scrolled immediately! No matter what.
So maybe it’s a wiser move to spread your information over more of your web page, and break out of the ATF handcuffs. Visit the Huge Inc. website and see what they say.
LINK:
http://www.hugeinc.com/ideas/perspective/everybody-scrolls