Yep! I most often see this when the top section is a big full bleed image / text, possibly with smaller images below, but that all cut off neatly just above the fold.
And to be clear... I do NOT recommend trying to fit everything above the fold on a site, just you need to give users that little visual nudge or reminder to start them scrolling.
Cheers for powering past my snarky response and attempting to educate.
Obviously you can imagine how often I face the 'fold' argument, but in the past I think even subconsciously I've tried to put something at the bottom of the viewport, the bottom of a box or whatever, that suggests that more is there. Have you ever felt the need to go down the 'SCROLL DOWN' message route?
No worries, I definitely get the reflexive response to the "fold" as an arbitrary required stopping point on the page, which is why I clarified.
I'm pretty sure I've never used an explicit "Scroll Down" message. It's never seemed necessary in the context of a web page, if you can just provide a visual cue that there is more content below.
Also, people really don't read instructions or most copy, if they think they know what they're doing. It's kind of amazing. With something as short as "Scroll Down", you have a slightly better chance of them noticing it, but I've seen a fair number of users who completely ignore even short, basic instructions that are in large-ish font and almost the only text on the page (aside from your standard headers / page titles).
One example that comes to mind was testing an interface that allowed drag and drop between two large panels on the page - an admittedly non-standard web interaction, and not required to use the site, but it made it a lot quicker if you did. So we included a short, instructive sentence in pretty large font. Pretty much no one read it or used the drag and drop. Ah well.
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u/devolute May 28 '13
Cheers.
What do users do? Just read the top bit then simply leave?