Tracking, usability, eye flow – so much analysis and research is taking place on how the human brain navigates around websites. Consequently, designers and web developers need to keep up, review their work and make changes accordingly. Knowing we were about to ‘tweak’ the Home Page of Honda, Mitsubishi and SEAT car dealer JT Hughes, we decided to re-examine this research and ensure we included all the best practices of current thinking.
Research Phase
Who, for instance, would believe that traditional terms from the newspaper industry – like ‘above the fold’ and ‘below the fold’ would have anything to do with the contemporary world of website design? But it does. The majority of eyeline work (by web visitors) takes place ‘above the fold’ – that is the top of the page before the user scrolls down. For that reason all the key elements for visitor interaction need to be ‘above the fold’. But that’s easier said than done.
The ‘fold’ varies depending on the resolution settings on a visitor’s monitor. At lower settings (i.e. 640×480) the fold is relatively high on the page. At higher settings (i.e. 1280×1024) the fold extends much further down the page. Decisions concerning what goes above or below the fold are often made based on a minimum targeted resolution. In a perfect world every element would be ‘above the fold’, eliminating scrolling completely, but with a big (content rich) site like JT Hughes that’s simply not possible. There were just too many things for the limited amount of vertical space. Add in all the complicating factors of the variety of screen sizes – desktop, handheld and mobile devices and it can get bewilderingly complex.
Web visitors are generally attracted to element placements that are high on the page, particularly to strong visuals – car related offers and alluring photography. For example, if advertising banners are to work effectively, a certain percentage must appear above the 1024×768 fold. In this case the JT Hughes’ branding also had to be ‘above the fold’. Navigation also must be above the fold – or at least the beginning of the list of navigational choices. If the list is well organized and displayed appropriately, scanning the list should help bring users down the page. Big content (the primary content of the site) should begin above the fold. Research also shows that users dislike drop down or side bar menus on the Home Page and these should be replaced with a clear ‘single’ click link menu. However, a menu system works well to move around within the site once past the Home Page. Current marketing thinking believes that the actual number of data points (and links) ‘above the fold’ is a strategic differentiator critical to business success.
Traditional thinking states that web visitors don’t scroll, so anything below the fold is wasted. However, current research debunks this myth. The growing popularity of Blog websites (where scrolling is the norm) has made scrolling a natural part of website navigation. Researchers used tracking software to measure the activity of 120,000 web pages. They obtained data on the vertical height of the page and the point to which a user scrolls. In the study, they found that 76% of users scrolled and that a good portion of them scrolled all the way to the bottom, despite the height of the screen. Even the longest of web pages were scrolled to the bottom. By analysing time spent, researches found that ‘linger time’ split into three ‘zones’ – with most attention paid to the top zone and the least to the zone at the bottom of the scroll.
Putting Research into Practice.
So, putting all this together, we created a new ‘menu free’ structure for the JT Hughes Home Page to maximise usability and visual impact:
- To work out where our ‘zone breaks’ would fall, we chose the target screen resolutions used by the majority of our users. But how could we possibly know this? Google Analytics of course. Smart clients, like JT Hughes, allow us to sign up to Analytics so we know everything about the visitors coming to the website. Browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions and a wealth of other visitor information, it’s all in Google Analytics – in this case all 78 screen resolution permutations recorded from visitors to the site.
- We identified where the fold would fall in different browsers, and noted the range of pixels that would be in the fold “zone.”
- We made sure that images and text appeared “broken” or cut off at the fold for the majority of our users (based on common screen resolutions and browsers).
- We kept the overall page height to no more than 3 screens and then placed the page elements in these sectors in priority order:
o Zone 1 now contains the major elements – used car search, MOT and Service booking, main sales promotion, latest offers and all the key links to the three Honda, Mitsubishi and SEAT franchise pages.
o Zone 2 contains secondary information – the latest news, contract hire, job opportunities and a site map of all the key page links.
o Zone 3 is for the peripheral information – terms and conditions, privacy policy, search engine ranking search term keywords.
How can we be sure that all the elements are in the right place? Good old Google Analytics to the rescue again. Analytics shows a visual overlay of ‘hotspots’ at a glance, so we know instantly which links and zone areas are the most popular – making it easy to move page elements between zones if necessary.
Does it work for you? Take a look at http://www.jthughes.co.uk/ and see where the folds fall and how the splitting of content into three zones aids usability.
Even with this level of research, and careful implementation, web design and development are only the first step in building a successful marketing strategy. Integrating websites with ecommerce and email marketing, SEO, Google Adwords and Analytics is crucial. But the real secret is to combine all this into the total marketing mix – so that it works with the offline marketing world of Direct Mail, press advertising and PR. Right across Shropshire, Mid Wales and the Midlands, businesses are starting to understand the power of the online world and its place in the overall marketing effort. They are starting to realize that a wealth of knowledge and expertise is out there, and by working with integrated marketing agencies, like Positive Advertising, they can exploit all the web and traditional marketing opportunities to the full.
