The Thunder

Down Under:

Below the Fold 2.0

@betabeat|@benpopper@chartbeat|@arctictony@disqus|@ro_gupta@outbrain|@jgut

#w2e #thunder

The next great frontier in web page design has to be bottom of the page.

Youve done your job and the user scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page because they were so engaged with your content. Now what? Is a footer really all we can offer them?

If we know weve got them there, why not give them something to do next? Something contextual, a natural next step in your site, or something with which to interact would be welcome and, most importantly, used.

-- Milissa Tarquini VP UX @ Scripps, Former Director UI @ AOL

The Thunder

Down Under:

Below the Fold 2.0

@betabeat|@benpopper@chartbeat|@arctictony@disqus|@ro_gupta@outbrain|@jgut

#w2e #thunder

Intros

Quick housekeeping item first *If you came for this, youre in the wrong place*A little history(where above the fold came from)*What above the fold means now / i.e. no scroll

Above the fold used to be considered the end all be all for content, advertising*In fact, ABC News May 2007 redesign removed the fold altogether from its homepage and index pages

But immediately received thousands of complaints and saw traffic loss; quickly reverted back to a scroll-based design.

Turns out that actual user testing and research confirms over and over that scrolling is a widely accepted, expected and even desired behavior (Study as far back as 1997 by Jakob Nielsen study even demonstrated this). But more recently*2006 Clicktale study: 76% of all PVs included scrolling BTF, 22% included scrolling all the way to bottom (which is actually high b/c includes repeat visitors who already saw bottom and dont necessarily have to check it again)

2011 Disqus data: 25-30% of users per hour scroll down to view comments.*In fact, visitors equally likely to scan almost the entire page (more than 90%) no matter the page size.

*Moreover, while attention peaks near top of page as expected, it turns out it also peaks near the bottom of the page no matter what the total page height.

Suggest those that do scroll tend to be some of the highest quality users most engaged, most willing to click, share, create UGC, etc.

Disqus Sep 2011 research report supports: sites switching to Disqus had significant comment increase (339% avg increase within 90 days); in turn saw on average 23% increase in time spent / per visit and 13% increase in PVs / visit Users that spend a lot of time below the fold (BTF) tend to be more active within a site More engaged / higher advertising value

PLACEHOLDER: RELEVANT STATS FROM OUTBRAIN OR CHARTBEAT?

*Nielsen Heat map lots of activity BTF including resurgence toward bottom per previous slide; very low activity when readers eye has to leave content pane*Nielsen heat map*Google AdSense Heat Map - strongest performing page real estate (darker = better)

While clearly the focal points above the fold tend to perform well*one of the key areas of strong CTRs (The Thunder!) is below the fold in the same vertical plane as the primary content. More so than above the fold real estate in the right rails.*And scrolling is only getting more utilized and ubiquitous today..e.g. with advent of Activity Feed UIs,*feature innovations like Infinite Scroll, *and touch devices / gestures that lend themselves to even easier scrolling.*e.g. Back to Fox NY exampleheres ATF again.*Heres BTF

*Pretty good job giving their engaged users things to do like share, check out relateds comment.

Disqus even added a notifications service here recently when users are logged in and leaned in to alert them of new activity on the comments theyve made or ranks theyve earned. (Could have done this ATF, but this is where our users are most leaned-in and looking for things like this to engage with).

*We can even see a real-time example from Gawker courtesy of Chartbeat. Remarkably as high or even higher usage BTF as above.*In summary, Milissa Tarqini boils it down quite well Since she wrote this a few years ago, we do see many more sites coming to this realization, but when you look around theres still a lot of missed opportunity / wasted BTF real estate.

So make sure your next design project gives its due to the Land Down Under.*

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