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That this audience and 37Signal's audience scroll doesn't mean that Paddy's point is correct. The rule of thumb is really about making sure you look after "regu

by sh1mmer 17y ago

That this audience and 37Signal's audience scroll doesn't mean that Paddy's point is correct. The rule of thumb is really about making sure you look after "regular" users. I'd love to see the "below the fold" rule disproved, however the fact that Google and Yahoo! search engines still deliver a default 10 results with pagination suggests to me that most people don't scroll, still. When it comes down to it Google and Yahoo! test more than anyone and there is real money on the line there. They would increase the default number of results if it made sense to do so now.

mbrubeck 17y ago
In 1994, Jacob Nielsen did a study showing that 90% of users did not scroll to find more content on web pages. But just three years later in 1997 he wrote: "In retrospect, I believe this was due to people treating a set of Web options like they would treat a dialog box... In more recent studies, we have seen that most users scroll when they visit a long home page or a long navigation screen. This change in behavior is probably due to users getting more experience with scrolling Web pages." - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9712a.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9712a.html "Most people don't scroll" was true 15 years ago. It's sad that it lives on as an urban myth despite being invalid for most web pages today. (I do agree that it helps to make key content visible without scrolling. I'm just pointing out evidence that most people do scroll these days, and that the evidence has changed since this was first studied.) Google's pagination proves nothing. Even on a 1600x1200 display, you do have to scroll to see all the results on a typical Google search page. (Try out a Google SERP on http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ and you'll find that over 90% of users need to scroll to read past the eighth result - and there's no way to get to the next page without scrolling.) Google has other reasons for pagination, like reducing bandwidth, latency, and server-side CPU time.
- isleyaardvark 17y ago
  Google has actually talked about testing results with more than 10 search results: "So, Marissa (Myer, Google VP) ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%. Ouch. Why? Why, when users had asked for this, did they seem to hate it? After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds." http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20....

by sh1mmer 17y ago

mbrubeck 17y ago

In 1994, Jacob Nielsen did a study showing that 90% of users did not scroll to find more content on web pages. But just three years later in 1997 he wrote: "In retrospect, I believe this was due to people treating a set of Web options like they would treat a dialog box... In more recent studies, we have seen that most users scroll when they visit a long home page or a long navigation screen. This change in behavior is probably due to users getting more experience with scrolling Web pages." - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9712a.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9712a.html "Most people don't scroll" was true 15 years ago. It's sad that it lives on as an urban myth despite being invalid for most web pages today. (I do agree that it helps to make key content visible without scrolling. I'm just pointing out evidence that most people do scroll these days, and that the evidence has changed since this was first studied.) Google's pagination proves nothing. Even on a 1600x1200 display, you do have to scroll to see all the results on a typical Google search page. (Try out a Google SERP on http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ and you'll find that over 90% of users need to scroll to read past the eighth result - and there's no way to get to the next page without scrolling.) Google has other reasons for pagination, like reducing bandwidth, latency, and server-side CPU time.

isleyaardvark 17y ago
Google has actually talked about testing results with more than 10 search results: "So, Marissa (Myer, Google VP) ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%. Ouch. Why? Why, when users had asked for this, did they seem to hate it? After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds." http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20....