The Fold

by KEVIN SILVER :: AUG 21, 2008 :: COMMENTS (0)

I love the fold on a web page. Especially it's sense of mystery of what's beyond the viewable area of the page. The possibilities. But the fold remains controversial because we always wonder if users actually scroll.

My assumption is yes they do and in 1997 Jakob Nielsen agreed that user do indeed scroll. But we have been lacking true statistics to support colloquial evidence. Some of our clients had been clamoring for this. I dug around and re-found an a great article I read last year about “Blasting the Myth of the Fold” on Boxes and Arrows. The author, Milissa Tarquini, offers colloquial evidence that users do scroll and supports this with a report from ClickTale that purports 76% of users in their studies scroll to some degree beyond the fold. It's great to have some numbers to support what we knew was happening all along!

tags: FOLD, INTERACTION DESIGN, USER EXPERIENCE, USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN, UXD

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