Reading Time: less than a minute.

Do people see content below the fold?

Hey come on, this is 2020 after all. People scroll, dummy. Should we be having this conversation?

Well, kind of yes, because there is a catch this time. 

Let’s see this situation from a different outlook.

Oh, and by the way, I’m sorry if I bewildered you with the word fold.

The fold is a term used by web designers and Internet marketers to describe a web browser window’s bottom border. 

“Above the fold” refers to the content that is visible when a website initially loads.

“Below the fold” refers to the content that is visible only upon scrolling.

In this new age, the screen aspect ratios are weird. We tend to see several fancy resolutions out in the market.

To put it into better perspective, I will show you a graph of some of the resolutions that are widely adopted.

.

See what I mean. The discrepancy in the adoption of various resolutions is huge. So, the steering question is:

Where can a standard fold be?

The answer to this can be said this way. You see, the fold in today’s world is an imaginary line. Just because you designed the content depth on an ideal resolution above the fold doesn’t guarantee you the desired depth.

Nevertheless, yes, the fold is still kind of deal.

Jakob Nielsen estimates that “web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold.” 

So, let’s dial back to the question we had at the beginning of this article.

Will people see information below the fold?

For that, the design focus should be on the seamless delivery of the information and not on the fold.

The relevance and engagement of the information should be ever-present. The discoverability of the thread should be aided by fitting visual cues, and the information presented should be digestible. 

Get these elements right, and then yes, people will consider the content continuation below.