5 reasons to ditch the “Above the Fold” concept
Every now and again a gem of wisdom worth sharing comes our way. Paddy Donnelly, an Irish designer based in Belgium, has probably written the most important web design and online marketing article in a very long time. The “Above The Fold” concept is a ball-and-chain publishing idea that may have worked in the Y2K era, back when screen resolution was no wider than 1024px. That was over a decade ago. It’s time to move on.
“Imagine a newspaper squashed all of its quality content on the front page. How disappointed would you be to open the paper to only find the leftovers?”
– Paddy Donnelly, Life Below 600px
Below are 5 reasons that explain why designing websites and marketing online within the top 600px is not only bad design, it’s just plain wrong.
- There is no fold on the web – People fold paper not computer screens. The “fold” is a legacy concept from the newspaper days (well before the Internet).
- Information overload repels – The pundits will have us believe we have a mere 3 seconds to win over a new visitor. Information overload crammed into 600px will most definitely make visitors leave before the 3 seconds are up.
- Guidelines are guides, not rules – Everything has its place, guidelines are no different. Guides are meant to direct you, not remove your brain.
- Tell a story – Use the AIDA model as a guideline to tell your story. People love a good story and sales professionals have used AIDA for decades to do just that.
- People know how to scroll – It’s 2012… enough said…
I’ll leave you with Paddy’s closing remarks…
“Just put a bit of thought into creating quality content and presenting it in an interesting and readable way. This will make visitors stick around for a while and use that magic scroll button.”
– Paddy Donnelly
What are your thoughts on the “Above The Fold” concept? Let us know below or on Twitter [@SterlingKlor].
Great article and I agree but what is above the fold to me is critical, it gets viewers to turn the page. If you don’t grab them right away bye bye.
The simpler the better for sure but it has to drive an action of some sort.
You want what’s above the fold to make visitors engage with your content and scroll, not “turn the page”.
The point of the article is this: marketers use the “Above The Fold” concept as a rule set in stone, not as a guideline. What happens next is everything and the kitchen sink is squashed into the top 600px. Microsoft is notorious for this. Apple on the other hand uses story telling (AIDA) to guide the reader to the Prize (call to action) at the bottom of the page, not the top. Nest.com is another great example.
Paddy Donnelly said it best…
“… the digital fold concept evolved into ‘squash as much content as you can above a certain number of pixels’.”
Hope that helps.
For a detailed discussion of why the fold is a myth and where to actually put calls to action, see this excellent post from KISSmetrics:
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/why-the-fold-is-a-myth/