New Report On Scrolling

Due to the advent of Web 2.0 it appears that more users are scrolling to the end of the page. Clicktale now reports the following in a survey from the end of last year. See the full report at http://blog.clicktale.com/2006/12/23/unfolding-the-fold/

Global Statistics
91% of the page-views had a scroll-bar.
76% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled to some extent.
22% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled all the way to the bottom.

Here are additional statistics from the same study:

According to ClickTale, total page length is not a strong factor in terms of how many people will scroll below the fold or reach the bottom of page.

Statistics further refined:

The average location for the fold is between 430 and 860 pixels down on the page.
76% of people will scroll below the fold.
15-22% of people will reach the bottom of the page.
64-68% of people will reach the halfway point of a page.
91% of pages are long enough to require scrolling.

I only wish that they provided more demographics on the users that comprised the study. They conclude that long pages fair no worse than short pages and that visitors are likely to scan the entire page no matter what the size.

Here are there recommendations for designing pages and my comments in green.

Recommendations:

1. Don’t try to squeeze your web page and make it more compact. There is little benefit in “squeezing” your pages since many visitors will scroll down below the fold to see your entire page. I still believe that your main call to action still needs to be above the fold. It would be nice to see some A/B testing on different placement locations.
2. Since visitors will scroll all the way to the bottom of your web page, make life easier for them and divide your layout into sections for easy scanning.
3. Minimize your written text and maximize images, visitors usually don’t read text - they scan web pages. Here I feel it depends on the page. Learn or informational pages need more text. They need to further refine their analysis by the different pages in the web conversion cycle (learn > shop > buy > use)
4. Encourage your visitors to scroll down by using a “cut-off” layout. I agree that if scrolling is necessary then the page layout must foster it. Just remember that users expect not to scroll on hompages.
5. Signup for the ClickTale beta program to gain insights about your website’s usability including visitor scrolling behavior. A little self promotion but don't we all do that?

What do you think about the survey and how it relates to your industry?