Scrolling: Do They or Don’t They? A Data-Driven Analysis

Originally posted on
Digital Design Blog

It’s a truism that important content, the content you want users to focus on, should appear “above the fold.” Does this mean that all content should be crammed into this valuable real estate? Should all content be designed to be consumed in one-screen chunks? The key to answering these design questions lies in understanding user scrolling behavior. Unfortunately, scrolling is one metric that is rarely reported on in the growing Web analytics industry and consequently, understanding how users explore long pages of content can be a mystery.

Within our Site Optimization practice, scrolling data is one of many behaviors we collect and interpret to inform the design recommendations we develop for our clients. We use scrolling data to answer three fundamentals questions:

1) Do users scroll

2) Do they scroll before they do anything else

3) How much do they scroll

These three questions provide a wealth of insight into content exposure and whether or not one-screen chunks are the best way to parse information on a given website.

Looking at a variety of “long” pages from publishers and eCommerce sites (pages in which more than half of the content is below the fold) we found that indeed, users do scroll. In fact, on average more than two-thirds of users on these pages scroll. Furthermore, nearly 75% of these users scroll before they do anything else on the page. What does this mean? Users can’t help but scan a page. They aren’t necessarily reading every word, but they are skimming, looking for that bit of content that piques their interest — a hot headline or that fancy phone the person next to them on the train this morning was busy texting away on.

But this is only part of the story. Yes, users are scrolling and skimming content and the fold isn’t a cliff which stops users in their tracks. Rather, the fold marks the top of a gradual hill. This gradual drop-off becomes readily apparent when we look at how much of the screen users view by scrolling. We find that most users scroll to about 50% of the page’s length. Interestingly, we’ve found there are some differences in how far down the page these users scroll on publisher pages versus product pages. For example, on average, users on publisher pages scroll to view about 40% of a page, while users on product pages scroll to view about 60% of a page (see chart).

While placing valuable content above the fold is a best practice, most users will be exposed to content halfway down the page. And users who are motivated to scroll farther are often more qualified users.

By understanding users’ scanning behavior one can make better decisions about content placement. And the answer to the question of “do they or don’t they” on a given site may be that only an advanced analytics team knows for sure.