The concept of “above the fold” originates with newspapers, where the newspaper was folded and only a portion of the page was visible at first glance. The industry learned that they must present the important, attention-grabbing content on the visible part of the page to gain interest.

This idea is just as important today where all of our content is online and on screens. The new “above the fold” is the visible part of the page you see when you first land on the page.

Present what’s important above the fold

Present the most important content above the fold, so the customer is exposed to it without needing to scroll down. This content is often the most impressionable.

What’s important, you ask? That will vary based on what your objectives are for the customer and what resonates with them. Try variations that showcase different types of key content. Possible examples include:

• Account creation
• Mailing list signups
• Best selling products
• Seasonal content or products
• Promotional offers (e.g. sales, discounts, free shipping)
• Recommendations (i.e. “based on your previous purchases, you might like…”)
• Reminders (i.e. “Treat yourself to one of the items on your wishlist”)

Push additional info down below the fold

Leverage your navbar and the area below the fold to highlight additional content, products, and pages that didn’t make the “above the fold” cut.

Consider restructuring the page below the fold

You might try variations with different design structures like collapsible sections, cards with short intros and learn more hyperlinks, or images with mouseover popups to maintain a minimal approach while still guiding your customers towards additional content and products.

Alternatively, remove some of this content altogether

You might even consider removing some of that additional content entirely from the page to achieve a more minimal design. Again, the fewer items the customer has to scan and scroll through, the more focused they’ll be on what’s left.

See it in action

In this case, Target focuses on pushing visitors to their seasonal products (Easter). Visitors that land on the homepage are presented with the following above the fold:

• A hero image/collage that focuses on easter and bunny themed products
• Messaging to support their objective of driving customers to these products
• A hero CTA in the center of the page that goes to a curated category page
• A navbar at the top to sign in, search, or browse specific categories.

As the customer scrolls down, they’re presented with additional seasonal promotional content (which may be above the fold for some viewers), info for contactless shipping options, and then it dives into curated sales and other product categories to browse.

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