Flight log / Transmission 041

Above the fold: what still matters on a landing page

The fold has been declared dead about once a year for a decade, and it keeps showing up to work. In Nielsen Norman Group's 2018 eye-tracking study, the first screen still took 57% of all viewing time.

The argument about the fold usually gets framed as a yes or no question. Do people scroll or don't they? That's the wrong question. They do scroll. The useful question is what the first screen has to accomplish so they bother.

On a paid landing page the stakes are sharper than on a homepage. You paid for the visit, the visitor arrived with a specific query in mind, and they'll decide in a few seconds whether this page answers it. This post covers what the research says about attention and scrolling, what belongs on the first screen, a manual audit you can run this week and the places where fold rules go wrong.

What does above the fold mean?

The term comes from newspapers. A broadsheet sat folded on the newsstand, so only the top half of the front page was visible to passersby. Editors put the biggest story there because it had to sell the paper.

On the web, above the fold means whatever shows in the browser window before the visitor scrolls. The catch is that there's no single fold. A large desktop monitor, a laptop with a bookmarks bar, a small phone and a big phone all cut the page in a different place. "The fold" is really a range, and on phones it's a short one.

That's why the practical definition is better than the literal one: above the fold is the content a visitor can judge your page by without doing anything.

Does above the fold still matter?

Yes, with a caveat about how much. The best public data comes from Nielsen Norman Group. In 2018 they analyzed more than 130,000 eye fixations from 120 participants using 1920 by 1080 screens across news, ecommerce, blog, FAQ and encyclopedia pages, and compared the results with their 2010 study.

The first screenful got 57% of viewing time. The second got about 17%, roughly a third as much. The first two screens together took 74%, and the first three took 81%. In the 2010 study the first screen alone took 80%, so people clearly scroll more than they did. NN/g attributes part of that shift to bigger screens and longer page designs and says the two effects can't be separated.

The part that didn't change is the shape. In the study's words, "the pattern of a sharp decrease in attention following the fold remains the same in 2018 as in 2010." And within the first screen, more than 65% of viewing time fell in the top half of the viewport. The top of the top is still the most expensive real estate on the page.

Do people scroll on landing pages?

Some do. Fewer do at every step down the page. The illustrative curve below shows the pattern on a hypothetical B2B landing page receiving paid search traffic: everyone sees screen 1, and each later screen is seen by a shrinking share of visitors.

Two things fall out of a curve shaped like this. First, the biggest single drop happens at the first scroll. Whatever the first screen says decides how many people ever see the rest of your argument. Second, the visitors who reach screen 5 are a self-selected group. They're interested enough to keep going, which is why long pages can still work: the people who need the detail will scroll to it.

So "put everything above the fold" and "the fold doesn't matter" are both wrong. The first screen's job isn't to say everything. It's to earn the scroll, or earn the click right there.

What should go above the fold on a landing page?

Google's own landing page guidance for advertisers is short and blunt: "It's a good idea to put important information towards the top of the page," and "don't make people hunt around for information they might need." NN/g's recommendations from the 2018 study say the same thing in UX language: put key business and user goals at the top and keep major calls to action above the fold. It also isn't only about conversion rate: landing page experience is one of the three Quality Score components in Google Ads, defined as "how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad."

For a paid search landing page, that translates into five elements. Each one has a single job.

The headline carries most of the weight, because it's the handoff from the ad. If the ad said "SOC 2 readiness checklist" and the first screen says "Compliance, simplified," you've spent the most-viewed pixels on the page making the visitor translate. Our message match guide covers that handoff layer by layer.

The scroll cue is the one most teams forget. NN/g warns about "false floors," designs where a full-bleed hero image or a hard horizontal line makes the page look like it ended. If the first screen looks complete, the 43% of viewing time that lives below it never gets a chance.

Which first-screen elements matter most?

It depends on the page, so treat any universal ranking with suspicion. What you can do is reason about it the way a removal test would. The chart below is illustrative: a hypothetical account where each variant strips one element from an otherwise complete first screen.

In this illustrative example, losing the proof point costs a little, losing the subhead costs more, and the two biggest drops come from a generic headline and a button pushed off the first screen. That ordering matches the logic of the attention data: the elements that answer "am I in the right place?" and "what do I do now?" sit in the most-viewed space, so they carry the most weight. Your own pages may rank differently. A page selling to a skeptical enterprise buyer might lean harder on proof than this one does.

How do you audit what's above the fold?

You can do this by hand in under an hour for your top pages. No special software, just a browser and a phone.

1. Start with spend. List the landing pages behind your highest-cost ad groups. A first screen that gets thousands of paid visits a month is worth more attention than a perfect page nobody sees.
2. Check it on a phone first. Unbounce's 2024 Conversion Benchmark Report found 83% of the landing page visits it analyzed came from mobile devices, and that desktop converted about 8% better. Phones are where most visitors meet your first screen, and where it's smallest. Our mobile landing page field guide goes deeper on layout.
3. Then check two desktop sizes. A large monitor and a laptop. Resize the browser window rather than assuming everyone sees what you see.
4. Use a private window. Cookie banners, chat widgets and pop-ups eat first-screen space for new visitors. Google's guidance asks advertisers to avoid cluttering pages with too many ads or pop-ups.
5. Run the 5-second test on yourself. Look at the first screen for five seconds, look away, then answer: what is this, who is it for, and what do I click? Write the answers down. If you can't answer all three, a stranger can't either.
6. Score the five elements. Use the table above. Mark each present, partial or missing at each screen size.
7. Look for false floors. Does anything make the page look finished before it is?

The usual findings are boring and fixable: a headline written for the brand instead of the search, a button that slipped below the first screen on phones, and a cookie banner covering the subhead.

Where the fold rules break down

• Cramming backfires. Stuffing every feature, logo and form field above the fold makes the first screen harder to read, not more persuasive. The goal is fewer, clearer elements, not more of them.
• Long pages can win. For expensive or complex offers, visitors often need detail before they act. The first screen still has to earn the scroll, but the main ask can live lower, as long as the visitor can see what it will be.
• The research has limits. The NN/g study used desktop screens at 1920 by 1080 and general websites, not paid landing pages specifically. It's the best public evidence on attention by page position, not a precise prediction for your page.
• Your scroll data isn't your conversion data. A page where few people scroll may be failing, or it may be converting them on the first screen. Read scroll depth next to conversion rate, never alone.
• The fold moves. A new banner, a font change or a browser update can push your button down. A first screen you checked last quarter isn't necessarily the one visitors see today.

How do you improve your first screen?

1. Rewrite the headline to match the search. It's the cheapest, highest-leverage change on the page. Our guide to landing page copy covers how to write it.
2. Move the primary button into the first screen on phones. Even if the full form sits lower, show the button that scrolls to it.
3. Cut one element. If the first screen has a carousel, a secondary button and three badges, remove the one that answers no question the visitor has.
4. Add a scroll cue. Let the top of the next section show, or use a short line that says what's below.
5. Test it properly. Run the old and new first screen against each other where volume allows. Our landing page testing guide covers sample sizes and how not to call it early.

None of this needs a redesign. Most first-screen gains come from editing the words and moving one button.

FAQ