To scroll or not to scroll? When our reader data shows 35% of desktop users leave a page before scrolling down at all, you should do whatever you can to capture the attention of the other 65% and make sure they’re actually reading your content.

How readers are moving around on your pages — particularly, how far down the page they’re scrolling — can tell you a lot about how to make your pages more engaging. Take a look at these remarkable statistics about page interactions:

• The most viewed area of the page is just above the fold. Viewership peaks (just over 80%) at about 550 pixels.
• The portion of the page below the fold is viewed for nearly three times as long as the top of the page. Pixels at the top of the page are in view for the shortest amount of time — about 4 seconds — and the amount of time in view steadily rises as we move down the page, peaking at around 1200 pixels.
• Readers who do scroll down past the fold engage much more towards the bottom of the page than they do at the top. We see this represented in the figure below, where we show the amount of time each area of the page was actively viewed by those who scrolled to view it at all.

What does this mean? Don’t just structure your content like every other article out there. Since there’s a large drop-off of readers once you get past the fold, you should touch on your main point early on to speak to all of your readers. When finalizing layout, however, keep in mind how readers typically read and scroll through pages. By setting up your articles to suit these behaviors, you’ll see much more engagement with your content.

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