“Instant gratification takes too long,” said Carrie Fisher, the late actress, author and wit.

When it comes to interacting with websites, she was certainly correct.

One Nielsen Norman Group study, for instance, found that people do like receiving email newsletters. But they want the subscription process to take — get this — less than zero seconds.

That’s what passes for instant enough on the web.

And that’s why it’s essential to put the most important information, including your call to action, above the fold of your web page.

What does ‘above the fold’ mean?

“Above the fold” has always meant the first screen of a web page. That’s the virtual equivalent of being on the top of the page — and that’s the front page — of a newspaper.

Research in the early days of web design showed that only 10% of web visitors scrolled, or looked below the first screen on a web page. But that was back when we had 14.4K modems and had never seen a scrollbar before.

But now that more than half of your visitors are coming to your web page via their 3.5-x-6.5-inch smartphone screens, the fold placement has moved. (Screen resolution also determines where the fold appears to different web visitors.)

So why do people look so much more often at the top screen?

Blame interaction costs, writes Amy Schade, a researcher for the Nielsen Norman Group, in “The Fold Manifesto: Why the Page Fold Still Matters.”

Visitors can see the first screen without clicking — aka, paying an interaction cost. But they can see below the fold only if they scroll. And that’s an interaction cost.

So how much do they scroll?

How much do people scroll?

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, web visitors spend:

• 57% of their page-view time on the first screen
• 17% on the second

That means they spend:

• 74% on the first two screens
• 26% on all remaining screens

Screen size matters: That’s not much real estate. After all, content that shows up above the fold on a 30-inch monitor can take as many as 5 screens on a 3.5-x-6.5-inch smartphone.

Want to see higher conversion rates? Make sure your CTA appears on one of the top two mobile screens.

Here’s another way to look at it, according to Pernice et al. On a page with four or more paragraphs, visitors look at the:

• First paragraph: 81% of the time
• Second: 71% of the time
• Third: 63% of the time
• Fourth: 32% of the time

Same thing is true on search-results pages, according to the Nielsen Norman Group. Searchers sometimes look at only a single result if that first result meets their needs.

The result of this top-down reading approach online? The F-shaped gazing pattern.

F-shaped gazing pattern

Picture the way an old-fashioned typewriter carriage springs back to the left after each line.

That’s the F-shaped gazing pattern, write Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton and Jakob Nielsen, the authors of How People Read on the Web.

Web visitors read the first line of your content, then less and less of each line until they finally stop altogether. That creates the F-shaped eye-gazing pattern.

“F is for fast,” says usability guru Jakob Nielsen, who conducted the study. “That’s how users read your precious content. In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that’s very different from what you learned in school.”

How the F is formed. Visitors rely on visual signposts — subheads, bold-faced lead-ins, lists and the like — to decide what to read, skim or skip.

No signposts? No help. Then visitors have to create their own shortcuts.

One of those shortcuts is to skim in a path that forms the letter F. That is:

• First, website visitors read horizontally across the top of the content — the F’s top bar.
• Then they move down the page and read across in a second horizontal movement, usually shorter than the first. This is the F’s lower bar.
• Finally, they scan the left side of the content vertically — sometime slowly and systematically. This scan forms the F’s vertical bar.

If they can’t find what they’re looking for in the first few lines, they’re not likely to find a word or sentence buried in a large block of text further down the page. So they stop.

Which means that if you don’t write and design for F-shaped viewing, then F could be for fail.

Top and center

Location, location, location.

It’s as important in writing for mobile devices as it is for New York real estate.

So think of the first screen on a smartphone as the $250 million Central Park South condo. And the penthouse? That’s the top half of the screen.

Readers devote 68% of their time and attention to the center and top half of the mobile screen and 86% to the upper two-thirds, according to a study by Briggsby.

So put your message where their eyes are: At the top of the top screen.

Put your key ideas above the fold.

To accommodate web visitors’ natural gazing patterns:

• Put the hot stuff up top: Pass the 1-2-3-4 test for the best user experience
• Offer a menu of content above the fold on websites: Tempt readers below the fold
• Weed out your web page above the fold: Don’t bury your message under sharing links, buttons, bylines and chrome
• Front-load your web copy: Focus on the first 2 words in headlines, and more
• Avoid false bottoms: They reduce reading in website design
• Put your CTA above the fold for conversion rate optimization

Most of all, write great content. Put the most interesting information at the top of the page, and visitors may decide to visit the bottom of the page as well.

“We don’t go to a page, see useless and irrelevant content, and scroll out of the blind hope that something useful may be hidden 5 screens down,” Schade writes. “What we find at the top of the page helps us decide to continue scrolling, navigate to another page, try another site, or abandon the task altogether.”

Learn more about where web visitors look:

• 6 eye-gaze patterns: How visitors look at your web page
• How to change eye-gaze patterns: Good writing, layout can make visitors read more
• Where they look on mobile: People gaze at the top half of their mobile screens

Source: Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton, and Jakob Nielsen; How People Read on the Web: The Eyetracking Evidence; Nielsen Norman Group; Sept. 10, 2013

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My favorite piece of advice for determining the length of a web page came from friend and fellow writing coach Jeff Herrington: “Think index cards, not toilet paper.”

In other words: Write more shorter pages.

Indeed, writing more shorter web pages has long been the rule of thumb for content length. But does this guideline still make sense? Should we write more shorter pages for clickers? Or fewer longer pages for scrollers?

In other words, should you write index cards or toilet paper?

Laptops, desktops: index cards

That original best practice of creating more shorter web pages was based on research showing that readers:

• Pay more attention to the copy above the fold. People spend 74% of their viewing time on the first two screens, according to 2018 research by the Nielsen Norman Group. What if they never make it to your call to action? To get more of your website’s copy above the fold, create more shorter pages.
• Find what they’re looking for faster, according to research by D. Dee-Lucas. That’s important. Because 96% of the time, according to a Xerox Parc study, visitors come to your website looking for specific information.
• Read faster, understand better, remember longer and enjoy more with more shorter web pages. In fact, shorter pieces in general are more effective, according to 130 years of readability research.

But then, something happened that made fewer longer pages more appealing: More people started visiting web pages on their phones.

Mobile: toilet paper

Today, more than half of your audience members visit your web pages via mobile, not their computer screens. The obstacles of using those tiny screens has changed the way people read web pages:

1. Single-bar syndrome. Every click counts on mobile. Waiting for web pages to loooooooaaaaaaaddddd on poor Wi-Fi is one reason people click less often on mobile.
2. Fat finger disorder. You know how hard it is to tap buttons, links and other touch targets precisely on your phone. That’s another reason people click less often on mobile. It’s especially irritating to loooooooaaaaaaaddddd a web page that you didn’t intend to visit.
3. Search engine preferences. Call it a virtuous circle: The more words on a web page, the more search terms Google can index for. The more people find your page via Google and visit, the more Google loves you.

In this environment, fewer longer pages may work best. For mobile, scrolling is often preferable to clicking.

So what’s the best web page length?

That depends.

When writing more shorter pieces for websites, emails and blog posts and other social media:

1. Write in complete chunks. That is, every web page should have a beginning, middle and end — but not more than one beginning, middle and end.
2. Think context independent, self contained. Instead of coming up with an arbitrary word length for each web page, make sure each page stands on its own.
3. Chunk, don’t chop. That is: 1) Chunk copy into logical, not arbitrary, sections. 2) Break those sections up into separate web pages. 3) Connect those web pages with hyperlinks. Don’t break copy up just to be breaking it up.

When writing fewer longer pieces for websites, emails and blog posts:

1. Keep it short. Mobile visitors might not want to click, but they don’t want to scroll forever, either.

   “Even a 500-word story looks long on mobile,” counsels the BBC in its guide to writing news for the mobile screen.

   Or, as usability expert Jakob Nielsen says, “Short is too long for mobile.”

2. Show them what’s below the fold. Offer a menu on mobile to get visitors beyond the second screen.
3. Let web design help. Design for scrolling. Avoid false bottoms. Make it scannable. And don’t forget white space.

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