Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Milissa Tarquini

Milissa Tarquini — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 06:12:47 GMT

The information I plan on presenting does address the fickle nature of the fold itself. But I’ll go further by looking at performance data of items that fall below folds on current sites. This is what I want to focus on – showing proof that users are actively scrolling and utilizing items despite their screen location. I also will present cases where the fold truly does matter and scrolling should be avoided.

Milissa Tarquini — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 15:12:04 GMT

Chris – you’ve got it right. The content is the key. If it’s good, users will follow it – and I think they will follow it even if they haven’t been to the site before. The design of the page is important of course, and great design can support that great content. But if the content isn’t good, well, then I certainly hope users aren’t scrolling to see more of it… ;)

Milissa Tarquini — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:50:42 GMT

Kenneth – I completely understand what you are saying. I used the examples chosen from AOL because I could use them without having to get into the corporate murkiness of what numbers I am not “allowed” to share. It’s a tricky space and I make it a rule to avoid the lawyers at all costs. ;) That is the main reason I reference the ClickTale study so often in the article. They can freely share *all* their numbers and do a much better job at statistical analysis.

I use the AOL examples to demonstrate the trends we are seeing. Those trends are echoed by the analysis in the ClickTale study.Getting people to click on certain things is our bread and butter, and the fact that so many page views and traffic is coming from items below the fold has been a boon. We’ve embraced it fully into our design strategy at AOL, so much so that we’ve redesigned entire sites based on this new information. Check out the new AOL news site for example. (http://news.aol.com/)

Everyone – Thank you all for the overwhelming response to the article. I wanted to add a little firepower to your everyday battles. I know we’re going to hear more and more good news about this topic.