Newspaper publishers and editors are well familiar with the phrase, Above the Fold. Above the Fold is where the most important, enticing headlines and news-related imagery reside. Above the Fold refers to the way newspapers are folded in half and displayed for sale.
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"Visualize your adult site as if it was a newspaper, sitting in the window of a virtual vending machine." |
Imagine that stack of fresh newsprint exhibited in the window of a vending machine. Newspaper sellers know that whatever appears on that top half is what the buyer scans to determine if the paper is worthy of purchase.
No matter what astounding article or informational essay lie within its other pages, the space above the fold advertises for the entire publication.
The web may be a brand-spanking new technology but its amazing how many old-school rules apply to its content. The Above the Fold guideline is a primary example for application of venerable rules to a recent medium. Visualize your adult site as if it was a newspaper, sitting in the window of a virtual vending machine.
Whatever sales copy, graphics and content your surfer sees on the first page (without scrolling down) is what will decides the success of your site. What you display in the area of that initial browser window has the power to make you or break you. From load times to headlines to attention grabbing photos, The part of your page that shows above the status bar -above the fold- is where you must concert your best efforts.
The amount of time it takes for a web page to completely materialize in a browser window is called load time. In theory, a page should take no longer than 50 seconds to fully download on a 56K Internet connection. Studies have shown that surfers have little patience for slow-loading pages. Once they learn to use the Back button on their tool bar, they click it often and without hesitation. If a front page is bogged down with big images, files requiring browser plugins or Java applets, your visitors may not wait for them to load. Your fancy Flash splash space-age dancing pornobot wont impress a soul if it takes forever to download. Each new (unique) visitor to your page has to download your above the fold content in less than sixty seconds.
Optimizing that first page for the web means think small. If the top half of your page is all graphic logo, use the best image optimizing software you can find to remove extraneous colors and code. Splice your image into sections and put it in a formatted table if you need to. Make your image interactive by converting it into an image map or at least by hyperlinking it to your home page. Even a graphic-intensive first page such as that of a paysite tour has to load within 20-60 seconds which usually comes out to a total of 50Kb (or less) document size, images and all.
Menus, Directions and More Menus
You may be the cleverest bulb in the box and know exactly what to click and where to go when you open your adult website. Youre a go-getter type who finds site links faster than anybody else does but the consensus of your traffic may not be so swift. The masses need guidance and direction. When they walk through your cyber front door, they need to be told what to do and how to do it. They need the Internets version of a personal guide. They need a site menu, in the window, above the fold.
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In fact, a navigational menu of some sort should appear on your page in every visible part of your site except for pure content documents. Some designers add menus to the top, side and bottom of pages just to be on the safe side.
Keep in mind different people absorb the content of a page in different ways. Some are visual and look for graphics to direct them; others look for text links while others have eyes that gravitate to certain areas of a page i.e., top, bottom or side. They will lock into their viewing habits and its up to you to direct them from those locations to the whole of your web. Most importantly, you have to include a menu to your site somewhere in the first window or youll lose customers.
Text Length Aint Text Size
Text files may be the smallest for Internet purposes but that doesnt mean your front page has to contain a blinding litany of copy. Two other newspaper rules you should apply are the ones of short, snappy headlines and expositional sentences.
Newspaper headlines are written so as to draw the reader into the story. They arent so much illuminating as they are eye catching. They entice your surfers to read your text. After you catch them with headlines, bear in mind the other trick to effective ad copy, the first sentence of any paragraph must fully synopsize that paragraph.
Whatever you have to convey to the surfer textually, do it with short, snappy headlines and short, descriptive sentencing. Nobody wants to read your mission statement -no matter how eloquent- from your front page. Keep your important text brief, informative, scintillating and above the fold.
You have a window to the world so much like the newspaper on display. That first window, what fills it and how it moves your potential buyers has to contain your most serious performance. That place above the fold, above the status bar is where its at and if you dont put it there, they'll never click a link. Theyll never scroll down. They'll click their respective Back buttons. They'll move on and spend their money somewhere else.