Above the fold matters, does it?
For years, the best and brightest have hammered on about “key content and CTA must be above the fold”. Certainly, tests we (and others) did in 2005 showed that being above the fold was a good thing. But that’s the game ultimately – things do change and what did or didn’t work in 2005 is not automatically the same today.
In fact, we recently ran a test on a client web-site that had, over time, morphed into a rambling page with various (ahem) marketing items starting to push (important) calls to action down the page. This has reached a point where the [Submit] button on the main CTA form actually fell under the fold. Shock, horror, “burn them” I can hear you crying. However, when tested with the button above and below the fold is made no statistical difference.
This didn’t worry us – we believe the results, not the opinions of experts – and it seems we are not alone in terms of myth-busting. What should we learn from this? Always test your ideas and then re-test them again frequently.
