If you look at a lot of blogs, what you’ll notice is they have a few type of information on the side of the blog. And those may be something relevant to:
- e-mail/RSS subscription
- related posts
- latest posts
- categories
- tags
- site sponsors
- blogroll
- site badges
Then you’ll see a variation of the above information around the blog, particularly on the top right and even below the post after you read it. Now before the scrolling is done, this is often called above the fold. What was studied is that most viewers would have their eyes glance towards the top right before they decide if they want to scroll down.
It’s pretty much like browsing through Google’s search engines. Those who make it to the first page are the luckiest and they normally get all the clicks. That’s why many advertisers would bid on the spaces to the left side and try to get some of those clicks. However, those that don’t make it at least half way, well, the percentage of views will wane.
Nonetheless, when your information is above, visitors are more likely to click around that area. That’s why you see a lot of those opt-in subscription boxes and often pop-outs coming at you. Statistics has already shown marketers who are internet scientists, in a sense, that information targeted above the fold works!
Hence, tools like heatmaps which were studied by Google and given to webmasters to later on optimize their chosen landing pages and whatnot has made it an ideal way to monetize on traffic and create targeted information to spaces where you really want visitors to click on through.
This eventually would lead to profits if tweaked right.
So while scrolling, the attention would diminish as said already and again, it’s always what’s on top that’s important. The shape that has taken form has become the inverted triangle. This is now found to be the pattern starting from the top down and from the bottom, it’s before the footer. And with that information, the way sites and blogs are designed look are particularly similar 99% of the time.
More resources to check out!
- Life Below 600pxs – A Counter-Study on Above the Fold
- Above and Below the Fold – Face and Fiction
- Designing Above the Fold and the Google Browser Size Tool
- Use a Heat Map to Boost Website Usability
- FREE Web Page Heat Maps
