Pay attention to what is "above the scroll"
Make sure that the information and links that all readers of a page need are visible without scrolling when a page is first viewed.
Last modified: 4/9/98
Help the reader process the page quickly
When a reader first encounters a page they should be able to quickly "get" what the page is about. To make this as easy and quick as possible, they should be able to figure out what is covered by the page, and where they can go next if they don't want to read any more, in one glance. That means the information should be visible without having to scroll anything.
The information you see when the page is first called up we call "above the scroll". This is a takeoff on the term "above the fold" in a newspaper, which is what you see when the newspaper sits folded on the news rack.
Design of common information and style is important
There are several techniques you can use to provide the information. One is to use clear titles and summaries that fit, even on lower resolution screens. Another is to put a bold, short list of the topics covered in the page at the beginning, before the main text. Yet another use is to write in an inverted pyramid style. Finally, you could use sidebars.
A common mistake is to have so much boilerplate on every page that there is no room for the main information. For example, some news sites, which use a headline as the link to the story, have a banner ad and very large headline at the top of the story page, a large sidebar with more ads and navigation on the side, perhaps a picture or logo for the section it's in, and no new information until you scroll down. This means it takes two clicks to find out what the article is about (one to get to the page, and another to scroll) instead of one as you would expect.