Know Your Users: Designing for Scroll

  By Stephanie Lummis

We recently held a focus group with high school students for a new university website we’re working on. We asked about their use of websites in choosing a school. When the topic turned to content volume, the results were unanimous: high school students love and want scrolling on the homepage.

Now, I know better than to put too much stock into (a) focus groups or (b) opinions of teenagers.  A better recipe for groupthink never existed –but this makes a lot of sense. 16 and 17 year olds don’t know life before the scroll wheel on the mouse, and most of their online time is spent on social networking websites like Facebook, where scrolling a lot is the norm.

In contrast, our strategy sessions with 20 stakeholders at the university gave the opposite opinion: effort should be made to minimize homepage scrolling and get everything “above the fold.”

Prioritize and get people moving quickly This is generally a solid strategy. We’ve heard and seen it time and again as people are very task-focused on the web, giving only 9 seconds to decide where to click or to hit the back button. A homepage is a lot like an airport after you deplane. You quickly scan for the baggage symbol, your next gate, or the bathroom with the aim of moving on as quickly as possible.

One screen is not a lot of real estate and tough choices must be made to prioritize the messages. This is where it is vital to understand the needs and motivations of your core user groups. Internal politics will no doubt give an opinion on these priorities (everyone wants a “button” on the homepage), but remember, the site is not for the internal politicians but for your visitors.

Large organizations (such as universities) are complex and have many different audiences and roles, making it difficult to keep everything above the fold. And, if your primary target audience enjoys a good scroll, then let’s not be afraid to give it to them.

A longer homepage presents a number of design considerations:

1. Watch where the fold falls – you don’t want a long horizontal rule to fall right at the fold. It serves as a visual barrier and visitors will think they are at the bottom of the page already. Make sure the tops of content areas start above the fold to “tease” people down – test a few resolutions with a number of browser button and menu configurations.
2. With a lot of content, structure is vitally important. The design should support and enhance the layout of the page and its messaging.
3. Does the page establish a hierarchy? With many discrete content areas and competing messages, priorities will have to be assigned. It should be clear what the most important message is, and how the rest rank from there.

A well designed site that balances use of colour, photography, and typography with the written word should support and enhance its usability, not distract and interfere.

Design success criteria Successful design convinces the user it is useful by positively answering these questions:

• Is it obvious how I use it?
• Does it create a sense of order and balance?
• Does it create a centre of interest that attracts attention?
• Does it have personality?
• Does it establish a pattern of movement to guide the viewer? 
• Does it tell a story?

While it is a good rule of thumb to keep homepages short, this isn't always realistic for an organization or right for its users. If you are designing for a longer page, remember to still be succinct and focused in your messaging and know your users - so you can place your most important information ‘above the fold’.