With devices of various dimensions coming out every day and everything becoming fast and efficient, Scrolling has become very easy for the users. So why are we trying to put the important content 'above the fold'?
Is the 'fold' relevant anymore?
Looking forward to see some interesting responses from the community. :)
Sean Ryan
Husband, Father, User Experience Lead, Music Lover, Occasional Gamer
was it ever relevant?
The term was taken from print design and production at a time when the web was still fairly new and the only way to access it was through a desktop device. Most screen sizes were fairly similar and you could predict fairly well what something would look like.
Nevertheless, it was still an arbitrary term that allowed designers and content managers to sell shit into their stakeholders and clients.
Now we can access the web through a plethora of devices with a multitude of screen sizes and resolutions, "the fold" is even more defunct then when the silly term first arised.
Design for your user and their needs, not for a technical constraint you may never encounter.
Ah the "fold". The reason carousels and sliders became so famous.
To answer you question, yes and no. Yes because the visible area holds the most value when initially engaging a user. Many have learned that all the home page content doesn't have to fit within the users screen because in this day and age it varies. Where this was a daily discussion 4 years ago because people assume that the rest of the world used that same monitors as us, it's not even an issue now. Mainly because our stats show that our users are using the sites as they should which has allowed our marketing and design teams to be a bit more liberal with their designs.
Should you put that important message at the top? Yep. Does that mean the user won't see your other content? Nope. That is unless your content is poorly written and doesn't engage the user as it should.
The next question should be do we care about optimization and how it effects load times?
I think so - look at anything posted on producthunt.com - so many competing products; so many products listed at 1 time - above the fold is your elevator speech. You've got seconds to explain what you do, how you do it well and that I should give you my money.
I personally don't design for the fold as I hardly work on stuff that requires SEO to succeed. According to Moz (2 years ago), the fold is still important and based on their reasoning, I believe it still applies to 2016.
At the end of 2013, Peep Laja spoke at SearchLove about the Principles of Persuasive Web Design. 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.
This continues to make above-the-fold space highly valuable to capture a user's attention. The main difference today is that users no longer have the patience they once had. This is due to the high volume of content users have access to, making earning their attention increasingly competitive.
Therefore, this space should no longer be filled with clutter and overwhelming amounts of information. Instead, above the fold content needs to contain a strong value proposition that explains to the user exactly what the page can offer.
moz.com/blog/life-above-and-beyond-the-fold
Kissmetrics has a different opinion and shows both websites with Call To Action below the fold and Call To Action above the fold can get the same amount of conversions.
The fold was never relevant online. This is a legacy from print that was incorrectly applied to digital.
Should you put your most important content first? Of course! But you shouldn't be worried that users will not check out the stuff below the scroll line, especially if they feel that your site has the information that they need.
If anything, trying to force everything above this mythical fold makes for a WORSE user experience, as you will end up either having too much information competing against each other, or hiding it behind something like an accordion or carousel. In those cases, the information is actually less accessible than if a user has to scroll to get it.
On top of this, in today's multidevice world, WHERE IS THE FOLD?
On a desktop it is one place, but on a phone it is another. If a user browses with the window full screen it is here, and if not, it is there. Designing for content to be "above the fold" is impossible.
So ignore the fold. Structure your content properly, but don't worry if users have to scroll a bit to get to it, because they will.
Additional reading: uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll