JMO, but "above the fold" is meaningless unless you're willing to design for a certain screen size and forget anybody in a smaller window. For all practical purposes that means building a website that works for 800 x 600 pixels and keeping your main content in that area. I know most of US probably are working in a larger footprint but most of "them" are not.

Build a page that works, has your hook in the top, and engages your audience from the start. If you do that, "above the fold" means darn little.

I'm trying to view the recorded version of this presentation, but the wrong video has been uploaded to the site I was given:

http://www.hubspot.com/webinar-website-redesign-strategy-for-2010-archive

The slides on the site are the right ones, but the audio/visual presentation is one for social media, not site redesign.

I also cannot view the recorded webinar - it simply is not loading. The slides are there.

Richard,

I recommend focusing less on having everything above the fold and more on making sure there is an enticing offer to keep them on your site. The enticement could be to get them to scroll down or to click to a new page.

On that same token, I always look at the Web Analytics data for the past year to figure out where the fold is for at least 90% of traffic. Then design my page to entice them to go further down such as a very compelling headline offer above the fold.

Remember the goal is to grab the attention of people who fit your customer persona, not meet everyone's needs.

Although the "above the fold" concept is very important, I think it is quite overrated!

Last year I used a piece of software called ClickTale, that records user sessions on your website. You can then playback those sessions and actually see the visitor's behavior. What I discovered when I started looking at hundreds of recordings is that website visitors DO scroll down, in every page.

My conclusion: 1) You should have the most relevant content above the fold. 2) The call to action must also be there, in plain sight. 3) This does not mean that the page must all fit in one screen. You can have relevant content below the fold, and people WILL see it. 4) The content below the fold can be stuffed with keywords, which will give improve your SEO 5) All your pages are landing pages. The home page is just one of the possible landing pages. It's impossible to have all content above the fold for all pages, but they still work. Why should the homepage be so different?

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