“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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