Sarah DeAtley
information + analysis + design
July 1, 2009 at 8:10 pm
filed under UX, Web
Tagged burke, candles, ClickTale, excel, mock-ups, scrolling, user analysis, UX
I guess I was feeling too web analytically inclined lately because I have been only reading about IA/UX stuff now. There was an interesting research posting by ClickTale, that studied how users scroll and whether or not they are actually reading things below the fold. There are 2 parts to the study, but part 2 is where they give substantial conclusions and advice.
Turns out people do scroll. Go figure. Its relative to the position in the page though, and people’s attention span drops dramatically after the top until they get to the footer, which they pay close attention to. Here are the main recommendations:
- The most valuable web page real-estate is located near the page top, between 0 and 800 pixels. Visitor Attention and Page Exposure peak at about the 540 pixel-line.
- If you have a long web page, add “stop points” such as headers and images to prevent your visitors from quickly scrolling down the page. It will prevent their attention from waning towards the end of the page.
- The footer of your page is important! Users do pay quite a bit of attention to that area of your page.
This is interesting to me because the primary argument of a person sitting in on a redesign meeting at the Burke was that no one will ever look below the fold, so they asked me to make a different mock-up reflecting that. While I think the most important/engaging content should remain above the fold, it turned a content-rich page into something that does not have much content because of the design restrictions imposed. You can see an earlier mock-up in the portfolio section, but I was undecided on whether this was a better alternative or not. I would post the new mock-up but I don’t know if that’s allowed yet.
Uber complicated graph from ClickTale
And if anyone is in the market for an amazing smelling candle, I bought the Aloha Orchid one from Anthropologie. Very nice. And all the millions of people who decided to make identical Excel macro tutorials need to stop.
Related posts:
Andrew McCord
on July 2, 2009 at 3:17 am
You know, I think this is a very interesting concept. For the last year we have constantly been barraged by the idea that “below the fold” is a way to ensure no one reads your content. When I seriously think about it, I always look below the fold.
This study seems like it makes some great points. The content in the middle is most likely to be lost. The advent of the mouse that let’s you scroll down a page super fast makes the content at the bottom almost as important as what is on top.
Most importantly, smelly candles must be difficult to convey to users on a website. How do you make a user “experience” a smelly candle?
Sarah
on July 2, 2009 at 8:09 am
Good points Andrew! Does this mean we should just forget about the middle content? Or would adding headers throughout the middle engage users? I’m skeptical of the effectiveness of that, I think habitually scanning pages will keep the middle out of the users’ focus. Most importantly, I think, is your question about conveying the smelly candle. I suppose I should really conduct user research to confirm the quality of the smell and provide testimonials.
Andrew McCord
on July 3, 2009 at 2:13 am
So my next comment….the posts seem to have a very strange time and date stamp. That seems a bit funky. Might need to be worked out.
As for the idea of eliminating the middle content….I think there is merit in having the page be no more than two full page lengths. Then, if you scroll down to the bottom you will not miss any content. It forces each page on the site to be concise…and that is a good thing. It might be a great way to keep your user engaged.
As for smelly candles…I believe user testing would be very appropriate!
Sarah
on July 2, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Yeah apparently we were in GMT + 1, I noticed before but didn’t really do anything about it. Thanks for being so vigilant.