If you’ve ever created or redeveloped a website then you’ll know one of your toughest choices is where’s the best place to put all your website content on the page and is there too much? SEO bods would say to make the homepage as wordy as possible but then usability bods would say to clear the page and make your key message look pretty.
I’ve often been heard someone it said “What about the fold, we don’t want them to have to scroll”, to which my reaction is – why? If you limit yourself to ‘above the fold’ your SEO could well be doomed because you’re not going fit much on after your key messages, call to actions and the obligatory engaging image.
What about giving visitors what they want with ease of access to the growing number of helpful resources now in demand? Maybe they’re not ready to go straight into a quote and need to learn more about your product before they realise what they’re missing.
Here are some of quick tips to keep everyone happy:
- Make your call to actions nice and clear and don’t be afraid to use the area below the fold– It has its place and you can reinforce call to actions at the bottom of the page or throughout the content – you can also add that extra information they may need without taking away from the important messages you’re conveying at the top.
- Testy test– a website’s work is never done, play about with your landing page design, content and call to actions and make sure you record everything down so you can refer back to it after the next test.
- Use someone else’s eyes– not literally because I’d get in trouble for turning you into a horror psycho – but a colleague (or even family member) will be able to impartially take a look and advise you on what they would want to see in a campaign.
An interesting article on this topic by Paddy Donnelly was sent to me – take a look and you may not be so wary of exploring life below the fold… http://bit.ly/bJMsEv
