It is generally accepted that anything that appears below the fold is invisible to the website visitor. Does this still hold true?
A recent research by UIE revealed that users scroll if there is a clue that there is something below the fold.
But should we now forget the ‘above the fold’ rule and format our pages however we want? Probably not.
There has a lot been said about download speed of websites and how it affects website visitors. But since the connection speed researches are out-dated now and some have broadband, does website download speed matter at all?
There have been a lot of studies on the influence of download speed on the visitors.
Some are really dated, even extinct now (Zona Research, “The Economic Impacts of Unacceptable Web Site Download Speeds”, circa 1998):
Website accessibility is generally considered something obscure, distant and unimportant to spend your time on. Apart from being a legal requirement in the US, UK and Europe (will be soon), accessible websites have quite a number of advantages in terms of business performance.
First of all, accessible websites are made accessible to people without or with bad eyesight. Apart from people, this includes the search engines, because they don’t appreciate the visual layouts as well.
A recent research by the Wichita Psychology University analyzed the influence of text-align and page layout (1, 2 and 3 columns) on visitors’ reading speed and comprehension.
For instance, the obvious results were that two-column full-justified text is read with almost the same speed than one-column left-justified text but a lot faster than one-column full-justified text and other two and three column variants.
There are literally dozens of small businesses on the Internet, each trying to outcompete the others. But an equally hard component of establishing a solid small business is budget deficiency. How can a small business site owner set up a website for $3000?
Clearly, there are lots of challenges in front of many small business website owners:
The ministers of 34 European countries have met together to focus on improving access to information to more people. This includes improving websites accessibility and also increasing broadband reach.
Increasing revenue is the main concern of nearly every business (if not, it should be) and everyone seeks any ways to get an extra competitive edge. Another way of genearating income is to increase sales force efficiency.