Therefore, this space should no longer be filled with clutter and overwhelming amounts of information. This is due to the high volume of content users have access to, making earning their attention increasingly competitive. The main difference today is that users no longer have the patience they once had. This continues to make above-the-fold space highly valuable to capture a user's attention. He had observed that despite it being 2013 (now 2014) and us living in a much more scroll-oriented world, content placed above the fold was still grabbing 80% of our attention. Is space above the fold still valuable in 2014?Īt the end of 2013, Peep Laja spoke at SearchLove about the Principles of Persuasive Web Design.

Based on a 1366x768 pixel screen resolution (a little more on this choice later), the area highlighted in red is generally how content is presented to users on a landing page (i.e.

On a webpage, the fold is the area of a page displayed to the user without them having to scroll. Editors would use this space to grab attention using important stories, powerful headlines and strong imagery to encourage users to buy the paper. The term ' above the fold' originates from the world of newspapers papers are generally shown to customers folded in half, therefore only the top half of the page is visible. Instead, we now need to narrow down our focus, using space above the fold to share our main ideas that will make people want to read the rest of the page. Space above the fold is still hugely important, but instead of just sharing everything there, the fear centers around the idea that users may not want to scroll. So, what about the fold? How has this changed in this multi-screen world? Smartphones taught users how to scroll and swipe, and as such have reinvented the way webpages are designed.

However, the arrival of smartphones and tablets has forever changed the way people consume information and navigate around the web. We would fill these 600 or so pixels of valuable space with all the important sections of our site we wanted our users to know about (we were particularly guilty of this on homepages, as Rand discussed in this Whiteboard Friday). For many years we used content above the fold as a gateway for users to access pretty much anywhere on our sites.

The Fold by An Na