

Life Below 600px - bmaeser
http://iampaddy.com/lifebelow600/

======
powertower
In my own experience, when I moved the buy button and price info to the very
end of the page, my conversions went up a considerable amount. The reasoning
behind it was that people needed to be engaged (and sold on features/benefits)
before realizing that this is not a free product and bouncing automatically.

<http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper>

This is not the general rule, but an exception to it.

Always test, and don't assume that the general rules apply to your type of
business, product/service/content, customers.

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ssharp
The goal of the 37signals fold is to grab attention and try to lock in
interest. They are fully embracing the concept and importance of the fold.

People aren't arguing that ALL of you content needs to be above the fold. The
argument is that the fold gets the most attention from your audience. When
you're optimizing, you should optimize the things that will have the biggest
impact first. Many times that is the content above the fold.

And let's not forget that a general web page is going to attract different
audience. This article seems to be saying that since you went below the fold
on their article, that you will go below the fold on everything. That's false.
I went below the fold on this article because I went to the page specifically
to read the article.

~~~
imjk
I agree, the 37 Signals page doesn't disprove the value of the top fold. The
argument for content above the fold was never entirely about people not
reading below it (even for newspapers). It's about above the first impression
you give to a user and enticing her to stay engaged. There's definitely
benefit to getting certain information across in that first impression when
they land on your page.

~~~
dspillett
Exactly. Above "the fold" should be what is needed to draw the user into
looking further down. A squashed up mess of many details and buttons/links,
which is what often follows from following the "everything above the fold"
rule, is not going to do that.

Unlike a newspaper that needs to attract you as you glance towards a rack
containing it and other similar publications, a website already has your
attention to an extent and as you've probably just followed a link (rather
than the site having opened in a pop-up/under window) you _chosen_ to be there
and have at least a vague idea about what to expect - the first half-screen
does not need to compete with other half-screens to grab the user's attention,
it just needs to not put them off (in the case mentioned in powertower's post,
by mentioning cost too early).

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andrewmu
I don't see the 37 signals site as a great counter example. Their main
products are on a 2x2 grid above the fold, with an intro paragraph beside
them. And the 'call to action' elements at the bottom of the page are a
reiteration of the products at the top.

It's a nicely designed site, but I wouldn't say it puts essential material
only below the fold.

~~~
antirez
Not stressing too much the above-the-fold concept does not mean there is no
difference between up and down the conceptual line of the average screen
height resolution of your visitors.

You can use the content that has no need to scroll to capture the attention,
but there is no need to stuff everything there. I think that 37 signals is an
example about that as they don't try to put too many "information" above the
fold, but only a few important stuff, and many other info is distributed
across all the page.

------
jonheller
It seems like the backlash against "the fold" has been taken a bit too far.
Yes, we know that people scroll. But it's still essential to have the
important parts of your site visible in the three seconds a user takes to make
a decision on whether to stay on your site or not.

Plus, Matt Cutts recently said at Pubcon that Google now analyzes the content
which it decides is above the fold, and places a higher value on that content
in terms of determining SEO results.

I completely agree that we shouldn't stuff the top of the page with every
important pieces of content and navigation option to the point where it makes
the page a mess. But at the same time you can't treat a really long page as if
the content in the middle or bottom gets the same attention as the content at
the top.

~~~
talmand
If this is true about the Google fold that has got to be one of the most
stupid things I've heard them do.

So Google decides where the fold is and not the designer or visitor? That
seems stupid to me. How are they to determine such a thing? How are we as
website creators supposed to know what Google's idea of the fold is to make
sure we get that high value? Seems another way for people to game Google by
stuffing all the content within this "fold" making for crappy websites.

Am I crazy that I think we shouldn't be designing websites for search engines
but for people?

~~~
joshuacc
This is probably just an iteration on earlier methods of prioritizing a page's
content.

Previously, Google would place a higher priority on content that came towards
the beginning of a page. As users became aware of this, they then began
organizing their code so that the most SEOable content was at the beginning of
the HTML file, but used CSS to make sure that the what users _saw_ as the
beginning of the page was still optimized for people.

Presumably, now Google is checking to see which parts are actually styled to
appear at the beginning, regardless of order in the source files.

------
nhebb
Straw man. No reasonable person has ever said that you can't have content
below the fold. The point that good copywriters make is that you have to grab
the visitor's attention, and the best way to do that is to have the attention
grabbing material where the visitor can immediately see it. It's not
complicated, controversial, or even worthy of discussion.

~~~
simcop2387
That's actually what he's arguing for. Instead of what he has been seeing that
many people are misunderstanding the concept to be "cram everything above the
fold, no matter the cost".

~~~
nhebb
> "cram everything above the fold, no matter the cost"

The reason I said it's a straw man is because I've never seen anyone actually
champion that point of view. I've seen minimalist landing pages, but I haven't
come across any I can think of that try to cram everything above the fold.

------
anjc
This _seems_ to make sense, except whenever i've seen analytics for time-on-
site, it seems like the vast majority of people spend less than 30 seconds on
pages. People's attention spans aren't automatically better while using the
web despite the lack of a physical fold, i'd guess that they're probably worse
if anything.

And anyway, isn't the person's monitor a physical fold? Like, you still want
to attract their attention with content. Having good content in the first 1000
vertical pixels doesn't mean you can't have good content everywhere else.

Very nice article though.

~~~
damoncali
The subtle bit here is that he "hook" needs to be above the fold. The content,
not so much.

It's not that people won't scroll. It's that they won't stick around without a
reason. And if they stick around, they _will_ scroll - so use the top of the
page to get them to stick.

------
rafski
One catchy infographic, a few opinionated articles and suddenly everyone
agrees the fold disappeared.

The state of the industry in a nutshell.

------
imjk
There's too much flawed logic in this guy's arguments. The most convincing
argument could be made by showing, either via heat map software or eye
tracking analysis, that a vast majority of people who arrive at 37 Signals'
landing page make it to the bottom of the page. I think if he did this, he
would actually make the opposite conclusion as I've seen almost every time in
the dozens of tests I've run in the industry. This does not mean that long
landing pages aren't effective (they can be very effective), just that he's
wrong in that most people read beyond the top fold; there's can definitely be
a significant and often precipitous drop-off.

~~~
dmix
The "people don't scroll" / above the fold thing has been discredited for a
while: <http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll>

------
damoncali
Fantastic design, good article(s). But my god, how long does that take (how
much does it cost) to produce?

And although not as artful, the "sameness" is unfortunately an area where
usability kicks design in the ass.

------
shuzchen
This article is flawed in so many ways.

First of all, the author has an incorrect interpretation of the guidelines.
It's not 'Never, ever, ever use tables', it's 'Never use tables for layout'.
And it's not stick ZOMG-EVERYTHING above the fold, it's make sure your most
important stuff is above fold.

The main piece of "evidence", the 37-signals site, is bunk. Their site doesn't
"give the fold the finger". I embraces it. What does 37-signals sell? They
sell their SaaS products. When you visit their site, what do you see above the
fold? Their major Saas products. Oh, you can click on them and get more
information. This is precisely following the above-the-fold guideline.

The other piece of "evidence" the author submits - that "even if it goes even
further down the page, way below the fold. You're still reading." is also
bunk. I read the article because I clicked through from HN. I was already
invested in reading the article. People that intend to read your content WILL
read your content.

You can put content anywhere, and your mother will read it. But that's because
she's your mother. You don't design a site for your mother, you design your
site for potential customers/consumers. The above-the-fold guideline is to
make a design appropriate for people unfamiliar with what's to come, to give
them direction.

~~~
billpatrianakos
Yeah you make some excellent points but I'd say forget that for a moment and
think of the countless books and articles and blog posts out there that are
spewing the same information over and over. I see a ton of professional,
established web design firms still designing sites like its 1997.

My takeaway from this was to really just remember that the rules have their
place but it's a mistake to follow them just because they've become accepted.
The web has changed so much in the past 3 years alone that we need to
reevaluate the rules and each time we design a site ask ourselves if we're
doing this because it's the rule or because it makes sense in terms of design
and usability.

I'm still seeing a ton of people preach about using the keyword meta tag and
preaching about divitis and semantic markup. Those ideas are all well and good
but things are different now. I know those aren't exactly design related
issues but the point is that some people are being fed outdated info.

There are a lot more opportunities to break the rules And actually be rewarded
these days. So you're content is more like a section than an article. Okay,
well that's debatable. Too many divs? Well it could be or maybe there's no
other way and it's not hurting future modifications or rendering or load
times. So be it.

The point is that we can't be blindly following these rules. Obviously we
really need to know and understand the rules first. But once you know the
rules you can then break them when it makes sense. I read the post such that
the author was basically saying "think about if the rule you're about to
implement makes sense. If you found another way that works do it. We're all
pros and we can handle it". Amateurs should stick to the rules until they get
their bearings but the rest of us should remember that it's not 1997 anymore
and sometimes those rules don't apply to the situation.

I'm not disagreeing with you, just had a different take on the message in the
post.

------
alexwolfe
I think the idea of the fold might means different things to different
designers. "Above the fold" is really "Your first Impression". If you have a
good first impression, chances are you'll stick around, if not you might
leave.

Regardless of what a user does afterwords (such as scrolling or clicking) we
can all agree that the first experience is "Above the fold". Just another way
of thinking about it. I agree that if you have good content users can and will
easily scroll to see the rest.

------
samgranger
What happened to me - You lost me at "Pretty crazy, huh?". I scrolled down a
bit more, but didn't read or pay attention. Pretty crazy, huh ;)

------
JustinSeriously
(from Jakob Nielsen)

"Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold.
Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the
fold."

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html>

The article includes the results of an eyetracking study, and a few examples
of viewing patterns where people did spend a lot of time below the fold.

------
tonyedgecombe
Did it say anything interesting, I couldn't be bothered to scroll.

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rplnt
I'm more worried about the width. This nice-looking page doesn't fit my
~1000px in width while it should. All the content is within my view but I
still do have a vertical scrollbar. That's quite a distraction. But what is
even worse is that the text is snapped directly to the left edge of the page.
Not even a single pixel of a space. Try resizing the tab to see for yourself.

------
switz
I agree with this to an extent. When I visit a website, I often skim the top
of the page and scroll down immediately to get to the meat of the content. The
fold is not meaningless, but worrying about a good design is significantly
more important than worrying about "the fold".

------
quattrofan
I agree completely with the article, however I wouldn't hold up 37signals of
an example of it "well done", I think their page is way to long and heavy and
putting their calls to action at the bottom, dumb.

~~~
imjk
This means nothing without quantitative evidence. If you've watched the page
evolve, you would have noticed that they've varied their length greatly as
they've tested for conversions. Not saying they have the greatest page, but
many times what you may think is "too long" or "dumb" - when tested
quantitatively - often proves otherwise.

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ErrantX
_This will make visitors stick around for a while and use that magic scroll
button._

But please also bear in mind those of us who use trackballs :)

------
ebzlo
I wonder what metrics for bounces would look like before the advent of scroll
wheels. Using a scrollbar was always a little bit of a pain.

------
Tichy
Survivor bias...

------
ChrisArchitect
while this debate seems to continually rear its head.... can we stop posting
year old stuff to HN?

------
cnxsoft
If there was some content at the top, I may not have read the line at the
bottom.

~~~
latch
That's actually part of his point. He's proposing that you use the space to
"build up" to the good part. I agree with him that, properly executed, this
would make better use of space, which would probably improve readability, (not
to mention a more compelling package)

If he tried to pack all of his "content at the top", readability and usability
would suffer.

