An article that questions the theory of making sure all content shows up above the fold.
Over the last 6 years we’ve watched over 800 user testing sessions between us and on only 3 occasions have we seen the page fold as a barrier to users getting to the content they want.
The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing | cxpartners.
Tags: layout design, page fold
Personally, I think that users get quickly trained based on the responsiveness of the interface they are interacting with.
It’s true that it’s helpful to have content show above the fold. However, if that means proliferating pages, I would strongly advise against it. Users know the cost of scrolling a page is very low–they remain in control the whole time.
On the other hand, the cost of clicking through to a new page definitely registers with users. (Monitor yourself sometime. When a site doesn’t click around quickly, you click less frequently).
As a particular case, I have not been happy with CNET’s new mobile website redesign, which has been around for several months. Previously, the entire article always showed up on a single page. I could access the article with a single click and then read it at my leisure.
Now, articles are sometimes broken up into 9 (short) pages. This means that at the end of the page I have a (non-zero) amount of time where I need to request the next page and wait for everything to download before I can continue reading. Not a very good user experience. That said, usability may not be top of mind in the redesign. They are probably trying to make sure that they get more ad views…