It’s nice to have some empirical evidence behind something I had always deep downed believed to be true. A shame that when Nielsen original came out with that discovery, people chose to adopt a “baby with the bathwater” approach. I’m glad you did a much more robust study and have provided that data for the public. It doesn’t change the way I design, but it may perhaps sway those stubborn clients that are unwilling to shed archaic design theories.

Great job!

If your boss is the only person using your website, you are stuck.. if not, explain to him(or her) that other users do not, in any way shape or form, browse on the same machine as him, with the same screen size as him, or in the same way as him.. There are too many variables out there to design based on one person’s ways… even if he/she is the “boss”.

B

Would it be smarter of Amazon for instance, to use that massive sale ad on their home page or do that thing where they show the last set of products I browsed? Which is more likely to result in an impulse buy if I had just intended to use the home page for its global nav or search bar?

For the love of all that’s holy, don’t cram all your content to avoid scrolling, but don’t take to the opposite extreme and pretend that the fold is irrelevant. If it was, we could devote it completely to ad space and make people scroll for the global nav without repercussions.

I respect data but I think this may be a classic forest for the trees example of confusing ‘duh’ for discovery. Yes, after people have loaded a page and they don’t find the content they wanted, they will scroll for it. Does that prove that it’s the best experience you can offer or merely that people will tolerate a little bit of effort to get to what they want?

And yes, when you ask people in a group they’re being paid to be a part of whether they think scrolling is a hassle they’re not likely to want to be labeled ‘the difficult one’ no matter how much you make it clear you want their honest opinion. Especially in the UK if your comedians are lampooning real cultural phenomenons.

Sorry but I think logic trumps data on this one. I do think eyeball tracking is neat and useful for studying layout flow but it doesn’t prove half the things people seem to think it does.

Likewise, whether something should or shouldn’t go above the fold isn’t a true/false scenario to be tested out in a lab or bandied about as an iron clad best practice. It’s a qualitative evaluation of what’s most important for users to have access to or see right away in light of your specific goals and your specific users’ wants/needs. That’s what design is all about.

Abovethefolditis is the symptom. Failure to choose the ONE thing that the page is about is the cause. Advertising is perhaps the greatest contributor to that failure.

Description: Cram everything above the fold so that it’s all junked up and cluttered as hell.

You’ve answered your own question – ‘Everything important is above the fold’.

That’s true, but there is also a lot more content below it. The point that is being made is don’t try and cram *everything* above it.