We all have heard a popular rule of the first screen: “User does not scroll a web page, that is why all your information should be on the top of it”. This rule is based on the fact that users do not use the scroll bar because they feel too lazy to do it. Guys from the CXpartners company (United Kingdom, Bristol) decided to conduct a research to clear up this question. So the Elegance IT company, which specialists are developing new web sites as offshore dedicated team, presents surprising results of this research:

Truly speaking web development professionals know that the rule of the first screen is a myth. Over the past 3 years, we have carried out about 800 user tests and only in three cases a lower window boundary has become a real obstacle for users.

Actually this rule came from newspapers: the most important materials are always located at the upper half of the first page. In the Internet it is used to describe a page that users see without scroll.

Why are we are not worry about the rule of the first screen?

Customers don’t care have a web page scroll bar or not, they think it can’t spoil good website design, and we have made sure of it. Users felt more than comfortable scrolling long, very long pages to find what they need. So you can find a lot of successful websites, which creators really don’t worry about the rule of the first screen:

Adding evidences

An eye tracker was used for the research; it allows you to see what user sees. As a result we have created temperature maps.

Scrollbars

Analyzing results, we saw a clear spot in the right corner of the map. It was a scroll bar, this means that it is used to estimate the length of the particular page.  Some content at the end of the page provides a stimulus for further reading.

The image below shows two versions of Bristol airport web pages: at the first one the information is divided into two columns, while the second template has an illustration as the main element. As a result, people have used scroll:

“Stop sign” for your eyes

Take as an example the First Choice company site, its web page was very long and users didn’t want to read it till the end.

A new title with photos changed the situation:

Tips for successful website design:

•    large amount of space between elements facilitates eye movements;

•    horizontal lines stop your readers and prevent further page viewing, so all the elements should be above the lower limit;

•    avoid scrollbars inside web pages.

Tags: offshore dedicated team, website design

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.