Introduction to Positive User Experience
You have put in a lot of effort into your business and website to drive traffic your way. Online marketing techniques are increasing every day to grab the lion’s share in the market. Several new forms of marketing like content, video, social media, and email marketing are becoming part of digital marketing strategies for improved performance and increased profits.
All these efforts are made to bring more traffic or potential buyers to the website.
What do you expect next?
Visitors will come to the website and take a first glance at your website’s virtual storefront to make an impression about your company. Depending on this impact, they would either stick around or leave your store. A half of websites suffer a surprisingly high bounce rate.
As a website owner, your challenge is to make sure that every visitor turns into a customer. You definitely do not want to lose potential buyers who already have landed on your website. What we can do is give them a positive user experience that makes them stick around and eventually convert into a user.
So, how can you engage them?
Let’s first find out the criteria used for better user engagement in the early world web evolution.
The Outdated Approach for User Engagement
In the early years of the website evolution, the concept of “above the fold” was in practice. The concept was very much inspired by the newspaper strategy. It focuses on placing all the important content above the fold to let people attract people’s attention.
A similar concept was used in those websites so that people can read it all without the need to scrolling. However, at that time, the focus was geared towards desktop screens, and users were less likely to distract by alternatives. Over the years, the concept of website architecture evolved.
Unlike the past, we began to build responsive websites with an aim to display on different screens and devices. The website layout needs to fit desktop and laptop screens, tablets, and primarily smartphones. So, the design and content need to be viewed on all of these devices.
No longer are we bound to keep a single focus in mind while designing the website interface. Web app development companies need to assure ultimate flexibility for website users on the availability array of different devices.
With the diversity of devices, website owners do not care about the fold concept. Instead, the content should be placed in a way that it remains easily readable and effective.
What is Fold?
The fold is an old concept of placing the content above the fold on website pages. The content might include headers, calls to action, information, and more. This makes the website look very messy and difficult to read.
Why No More “Fold”?
Earlier, website makers wanted to make the most of the front display of the website. They might not want to miss anything. Particularly, companies with vast resources on their website tended to populate the fold of the homepage with each and every choice for users.
There were multiple menus, Newsfeeds, Numerous widgets, slider animations, case studies. Links to more pages and options with an intent to show a variety of services, products, or solutions. This old approach resulted in a visual noise right on the face of the website. The place looked messy and left users in confusion.
However, the modern web design approach doesn’t want to confuse visitors with an array of choices right in front of their eyes. Visitors are quick to scroll down to explore “what’s more.” Here is why you should not be focusing on the outdated “above the fold” concept.
- We live in a diverse-screen era where every device has a different shape and size. The “above the fold” concept was common for desktop monitors having a common resolution for screens.
- We are addicted to scrolling. Website visitors know and are used to scroll while they visit a virtual store. Also, modern devices are designed to scroll. With a little or no effort, users can scroll down the page and read content
- You cannot convince and convert users in a small area. You have to tell an influential story to your website visitors in order to turn them into visitors, and it must cover an area of more than 600px. You have to give users some time and visual comfort to understand and grasp some information that leads to conversion. Alternatively, creating a visual strain for their eyes can do the opposite.
- And that’s okay because a story unfolds as the reader digests the information. This means the user will read, digest the information, and continue to scroll just as they flip a page in an interesting book.
- “Above the Fold” work for the newspaper but not for a website. The needs of a newspaper and a modern electronic web page design do not match.
- Call-to-action shouldn’t be placed above the fold. To convert your website visitors onto buyers, you need to gain their trust first. With a high-quality and appealing content placement, you can compel visitors about your expertise or product quality.
The Fold Independent Approach
Placing most of the content above the fold doesn’t guarantee the visibility of the content for two reasons; users scroll down; a lot of content creates ambiguity. So, even if the content is above the fold, it doesn’t necessarily get noticed.
However, the modern and more practical approach focuses on simplicity, clarity, and effectiveness. Modern design focuses on a balance of negative space and the elements of web content. It allows users to use the navigation bar to acquire more information they need to convert.
Read more: becoming-a-certified-scrum-master
The Concept of User-Focused Design
User-centric website design focuses on offering visitors problems by the use of quality content. No matter what your website sells, the ultimate goal of the website is to convert visitors into buyers. And to convert more leads, it doesn’t really matter that you display content above or below the fold. What matters is the content quality and its effectiveness to persuade users to take action.
Pay attention to connecting with website visitors – this matters more than a bombardment of various content. A user-focused web design doesn’t necessarily have to be above the fold. It should be well-placed in a vertically arranged setting. Since scrolling is an intuitive action for website visitors, caring about the fold is useless in a website design strategy.
