Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988

The myth of the fold

In web design and development there is almost always a desire to surface as many items of content and functionality above “the fold”* as you can possibly cram in there: Top news, latest blog posts, branding, primary navigation, secondary navigation, customer testimonials, carousels, search box, Twitter stream, log in box, and of course at lease a couple ads.

Below is a brief catalog of the many years of user research that debunks the concept of the fold.

Let us be free of this burden once and for all. Our users already are.

The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing

Blasting the Myth of the Fold

Unfolding the Fold

Life, Below 600px

Debunking the “above the fold” myth

Below the Fold: Why Scrolling Isn’t A Bad Thing

* The fold is the viewable area of a web page seen by a visitor upon first landing on the page, without having scrolled. The concept comes from newspaper design. Since newspapers had to be folded in half to fit in racks or on newsstands, the attention-grabbing headlines and photos had to be placed “above the fold” to entice people to pick up the paper.

Labels: design, the fold, usability, web design, webdev

Posted by espd at 1:44 PM | 
Share and enjoy:  | Email this: