OK so the title of this post might be a bit exaggerated, however a website usability industry expert (Jakob Nielsen) has published a recent report stating that 80% of a user’s time is spent ‘above the fold’. Whilst each user will obviously have a different level of attention span, users are without doubt averse to too much scrolling, and they are likely to pay most attention to the top-most web page content.

What does this mean for website owners and ecommerce sites?

• Firstly the top of the page is the most important part and any calls to action / important information should be located near the top.
• Don’t put important information near the bottom of a long web page, users are a lot less likely to scroll to the bottom.
• Consider your website’s target audience demographics – certain types of users, perhaps based on age groups or computer familiarity, are less likely to scroll than other groups. It may be necessary to indicate to users that more information can be found by scrolling.
• To maximise sales, ecommerce sites should avoid displaying too many products on one web page, and product pages should contain all the relevant information ‘above the fold’.