ClickTale Scrolling Research Report V2.0 -
Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach
Posted on October 5th, 2007
In our previous report entitled “Unfolding the Fold”, we analyzed web visitors’ scrolling behavior and determined the effect of the so-called “fold” on browsing activity.
One year later we are excited to publish much more detailed research, revealing new information and providing you with a whole new set of best practices and recommendations. This research is based on a sample of a data that was collected by the ClickTale service from thousands of websites and over 80,000 page views chosen at random between June 15th and July 15th, 2007.
What did we learn last time?
- 91% of the page views were long enough to contain scroll-bar. Of those, 76% were scrolled to some extent.
- 22% of the page views with a scroll-bar were scrolled all the way to the bottom.
- Visitors are equally likely to scan the entire page no matter the page size.
- The fold is not a single location, but a broadly dispersed distribution with three peaks located at roughly 430, 600 and 860 pixels. These peaks correspond to the three most popular screen resolutions used today: 800×600, 1024×768 and 1280×1024, minus about 170 pixels used up by the non-client area of the browser. In other words, depending on the screen size, users will typically see at least 430 and up to 860 vertical pixels worth of information on their screens when they open their site, without having to scroll.
Research Methodology
We measured visitor scrolling using a new metric called Visibility which is defined as the fraction of page views that scroll to a specific location in the page. The location visitors reach on the page is called Scrolling Reach. When scrolling reach is measured as a relative number, it is expressed as a percentage of the page and when it’s measured as an absolute number, it is expressed in pixels.
Page views were aggregated into 9 page height groups that vary from 2,000 to 10,000 pixels. To qualify into a specific group, a web page had to be within 2-10% of the designated group height. Once a page qualified into a height group, we analyzed the visitor scrolling behavior and extracted insights about their browsing habits.
Note that this research is based on page views, not visitors. Therefore, any given page view doesn’t necessarily reflect the first visit to a page.
Insights
- As can be seen from the “Visibility vs. Absolute Scrolling Reach” graph, for content above the 1,000 pixel line, visitor scrolling habits are remarkably similar regardless of page height. This similarity in scrolling behavior is due to the fact that above the 1,000 pixel line Visibility is primarily affected by the distribution of the fold and by non-scrolling visitors.
- For content below the 1,000 pixel line, scrolling behavior seems to diverge in the absolute pixel scale. However…
- Almost identical percentages of page views (15%-20%) reach the page bottom regardless of page height.
- We define the page area Above the Fold as as the area above the 1,000 pixel line covering over 99% of observed fold locations. The similarity in scrolling behavior Above the Fold across the various page heights can be seen more clearly in the chart below:
- When we examine the “Visibility vs. Scrolling Reach” data as expressed in the graph below, exposure rates appear to diverge at the page top and converge at the page bottom.
- At the page bottom, exposure rates are almost identical and range between 15-20%.
- The divergence at the top of the page might be due to page height and the fold effect: The fold represents a larger percentage of the shorter pages and therefore a larger percent of those pages are viewed at close to or at 100%.
- To test this hypothesis, we reran the analysis focusing on scrolling behavior Below the Fold. The results were dramatic.
- It appears that regardless of page height, scrolling reach is very similar on the relative scale with some resemblance to a linear model (or a very flat exponential): between 64% to 68% of the page views are likely to reach the 1K pixel line and 15% to 20% will reach the bottom of the page.
Conclusions
By modeling the relationship between visibility and scrolling Reach below 1,000 pixels, we find a statistically significant linear regression with the following characteristics:
- Visibility = 57.6 - (0.409 x Scrolling Reach)
where Scrolling Reach (from 0 to 100%) is a the fraction of the page scrolled below the 1,000 pixel-line. - Coefficient of Determination (R-squared) = 89.4% which indicates that the linear model is a very good fit for the scrolling data.
Hence, it appears that visitors scroll in a relative way - about the same percentage of page views will reach the middle of a web page regardless of the actual page height in pixels.
Visitors appear to be using the location of the scroll bar but not the size of the tracker when scrolling, since the scroll bar location is a relative indicator and the scroll tracker size is an indicator of page height.
Stay tuned for part 2!
In part 2 of this report, we will discuss page view times and how visitors tend to distribute their attention over the web page. Watch out for some useful tips on where to place your most pertinent information and advertising. Subscribe to our blog RSS feed so you don’t miss part 2 or any other future reports. Continue to part 2!
You can also find out how your website measures up relative to the averages reported above by using the ClickTale Heatmaps and analytics service to record and observe your own visitors’ online behavior. Sign up to measure how visitors scroll in your web site!
Filed under Research |
October 7th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
[...] report released today discusses amount of scrolling a site visitor is willing to process. What would be great is to know [...]
October 7th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
it is a lot of nice ideas .it is my first time reading this stuff hope to see more.
it looks that it may help to see tables with few input and as a result the visibility as output .(it will be easy to dijest the sum result stew from the formula)
October 8th, 2007 at 7:52 am
[...] October 8th, 2007 · No Comments ClickTale Blog [...]
October 8th, 2007 at 9:31 am
[...] scroll. But how deep do they scroll? Some interesting graphs imo Spread the [...]
October 8th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
[...] ClickTale Blog » ClickTale Scrolling Research Report V2.0 - Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach Le mythe du “fold” d’une page web nouveau largement mis en doute. Les gens scrollent, beaucoup. (tags: scroll usability fold) [...]
October 10th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Wow. thats some cool info. Have just sent it to our design and marketing teams. Am off to try the free version and see how I get on with it.
October 12th, 2007 at 10:35 am
The information provided here is very interesting. It would help qualify the data if you provided an idea of the sample size - i.e. number of visitors the tests were carried out on, and the types of sites they were tested for, since the presence of multimedia content etc can seriously sway the likelihood that people might scroll lower.
October 15th, 2007 at 9:10 am
This is very interesting. Thanks for doing this study. It would be interesting to see if scrolling behavior changes based on referral. That is, are visitors less likely to scroll when coming from a PPC ad vs. a link from an opt-in email campaign? Also, time spent on page might also be a good indicator of whether or not visitors simply scrolled down to see how much page content was available or whether they actually took the time to digest all the material on the page.
November 5th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
ClickTale Blog: Scrolling Research Report V2.0 - Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach…
ClickTale serves up their “Scrolling Research Report V2.0 - Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach”.
……
November 7th, 2007 at 8:23 am
[...] ClickTale Blog » ClickTale Scrolling Research Report V2.0 - Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach Visibility and Scroll Reach (tags: usability research) [...]
December 4th, 2007 at 5:53 am
[...] part 1 of our ClickTale Scrolling Report, we learned that visitors scroll in a relative way - relative position inside the page, not based [...]
December 4th, 2007 at 10:26 am
[...] attention at each point in the page, please see the more recent research we have published in 2007 (ClickTale Scrolling Research Report V2.0 - part 1 and part [...]
December 10th, 2007 at 12:48 am
[...] inte längre få med allt innehåll överst på sidan ovanför scrollgränsen (via k-märkt). För användare tycker det är helt ok att scrolla (i alla fall [...]
December 10th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
[...] has a useability study (part 1 and part 2) which discusses findings based on their tracking [...]
December 21st, 2007 at 6:37 pm
[...] 3 KLIKKSREGELEN Det skal ikke være mer enn tre museklikk for å finne fram til ønsket informasjon på et nettsted. Undersøkelser viser likevel at brukerne ikke slutter å lete etter tre klikk. Ingen blir frustrert og vil forlate siden om de må bruke flere klikk, så lenge de får gjort det de er ute etter (User Interface Engineering, 2003). Det viktigste er at brukerne vet hvor de er, hvor de var og hvor de kan gå (ClickTale, 2007). [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Great, this means the users are more likely to scroll than to click on tabs. thanks.
Cheers,
Praveen.
March 29th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
[...] required. You don’t have to restrict the page depth to one page, people have been proven to scroll down a deep page to get to the content they [...]
April 10th, 2008 at 6:29 am
[...] savoir ce que l’on aperçoit d’une page avant de commencer scroller, est bien conçu. L’étude ClickTale, s’appuyant sur plusieurs milliers de sites visités et près de 80 000 pages vues, nous [...]
May 21st, 2008 at 9:03 pm
[...] Scrolling Research Report V2.0 - parte 1 y parte [...]
July 14th, 2008 at 6:53 am
[...] Visibility and scroll reach [...]
July 31st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
[...] internas o percentual de usuários que rolaram a tela cresceu de forma significativa. Uma outra pesquisa, desta vez realizada pelo Click Tail Blog, revela que, em cerca de 80.000 page views de centenas de sites diferentes, 91% porcento das [...]
August 19th, 2008 at 10:41 am
[...] da ClickTale, basati su analisi effettuate a partire dal loro servizio di tracciamento (2006/12, 2007/10, 2007/12). Due invece sono del sito User Interface Engineering, che fa alcune osservazioni [...]
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
[...] da ClickTale, basati su analisi effettuate a partire dal loro servizio di tracciamento (2006/12, 2007/10, 2007/12). Due invece sono del sito User Interface Engineering, che fa alcune osservazioni [...]
September 28th, 2008 at 4:42 am
[...] and figures Last week, reading webanalisten.nl, I came across research (part 1, part 2 and part 3) from Clicktale about scrolling behaviour, scroll reach, visitor attention and location [...]
October 14th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
[...] However, I would say that what makes the fold argument hard for me is that there is no set fold. The ClickTale Blog has a great post on scrolling. They’ve done quite a bit of data crunching and their finding is in “ClickTale Scrolling Research Report V2.0 — Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach.” [...]
November 11th, 2008 at 4:22 am
[...] Part 1 – Visibility and scroll reach [...]
November 27th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Wow!! It’s getting better and better. Keep it up man.,
January 9th, 2009 at 4:20 am
[...] research into how often and how much users scroll @ Clicktale http://blog.clicktale.com/2007/10/05/clicktale-scrolling-research-report-v20-part-1-visibility-and-s... (still to [...]
May 21st, 2009 at 2:15 am
[...] Scrolling Research Report V2.0—Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach from ClickTale [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 4:47 am
[...] their 2 part report. URL blog.clicktale.com/2007/10/05/… [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 6:43 am
[...] ClickTale makes some observations about scrolling based on their research of users’ browsing behaviors around “the fold” and “attention”. [...]
July 31st, 2009 at 11:00 am
[...] done some great research in this area and approached the topic from many perspectives. Initially their studies in 06/07 were simple and they concluded [...]
August 2nd, 2009 at 12:01 pm
[...] en uitgebreidere gegevens zijn beschikbaar via een recenter ClickTale onderzoek uit 2007, bekijk hier deel 1 en deel [...]
September 19th, 2009 at 2:44 am
[...] Scrolling Research Report V2.0—Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach from ClickTale [...]
October 6th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
[...] Source: http://blog.clicktale.com/2007/10/05/clicktale-scrolling-research-report-v20-part-1-visibility-and-s... [...]
December 1st, 2009 at 10:50 am
[...] Scrolling Research Report V2.0—Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach from ClickTale [...]
December 16th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
[...] most folks try to minimize the amount of scrolling a user has to do. Studies seem to indicate that while users will scroll, the less scrolling a web page requires, the more usable it will be. Most websites attempt to [...]
December 17th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
[...] ClickTale Scrolling Research Report V2.0 - Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach - “Visitors are equally likely to scan the entire page no matter the page size.” - ClickTale also makes an interesting vistor tracking tool. [...]
December 21st, 2009 at 4:55 am
[...] en undersøgelse fra ClickTale’s research, har 91% af alle sidevisninger en scroll-bar. 76% af alle sidevisninger med en scroll-bar, blev [...]
December 26th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
[...] Amélie Boucher dans Ergonomie web, pour des sites web efficaces et elle nous donne même une preuve) Autre chose, imaginons que le bouton est uniquement placé la fin de la description produit. Non [...]
January 13th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
[...] seen a lot of discussion lately about “the fold” and how it applies to the web or if it does at all. Some of it is more research based than others. And I haven’t really seen [...]
January 19th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
[...] Tal. “ClickTale Scrolling Research Report V2.0.” ClickTale, October 5, 2007. Retrieved February 20, [...]
March 1st, 2010 at 7:15 am
[...] no tiene paciencia 5- Patrones de navegación 6- Ver no es lo mismo que reconocer o entender 7- La gente es feliz utilizando la barra de desplazamiento vertical 8- Los usuarios no leen 9- Las personas adquieren hábitos y costumbres. No les gusta aprender [...]
April 9th, 2010 at 7:16 am
[...] è tratto a sua volta da un post del blog di ClickTale, un’applicazione javascript in grado di tracciare i movimenti del mouse dell’utente. La [...]
April 29th, 2010 at 3:02 am
[...] they are on the right site they are equally likely to scan the whole page no matter the length, according to Clicktale. Other than that it is fine if content goes off or appears past the bottom of the screen, as long [...]
June 21st, 2010 at 4:51 am
[...] Scrolling Research Report V2.0—Part 1: Visibility and Scroll Reach from ClickTale [...]
July 12th, 2010 at 11:16 am
[...] the Fold ClickTale Scrolling Research Report V2.0 Part 1 How to Discuss “the Fold” with a Client The Myth of the Page Fold: Evidence from User [...]