“Above The Fold” And Why It’s Vital On Your Blog (Part 1)
“Above the fold” is an old newspaper term - since papers arrived folded, the top half was seen first - so obviously, if you wanted to get attention (and encourage people to read the paper), you put your best stories “above the fold”.
On the Internet, you’d think this was not a problem, but we still have a ‘fold’ to deal with - the first part of the web page that appears in our browser window. Anything below it has a problem - because if this top section doesn’t attract, fewer people will scroll down.
So we still need to watch what goes there. For example,
- If there’s too many ads, people many not scroll down.
- If the headline is uninteresting, people many not scroll down.
- If the design, layout, etc is poor, people many not scroll down.
- If the start of the article is lousy, people many not scroll down.
Note I say ‘may’ - people you have a relationship with will continue down, and even with a weak page layout or too many ads, SOME will scroll down and visit.
But is that the way to do things - hope for a fraction of visitors to continue with you - or try to improve the numbers?
So if you have a chance, review your site and try to see it as a visitor:
- Is the site inviting?
- Do you have anything interesting right away to see?
- Do you have anything to encourage further reading and scrolling?
And although a few tweaks can help with these problems, there’s still one more biggy, and I’ve left it for last - headers.
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