You’ve done it, and so have I.
You see a newspaper lying on a coffee table. After a quick glance at the headline you mumble “so what?”
But just as you’re about to turn away, you notice something else…
And that something else compels you to pick up the paper and have a look.
Scroll curiosity in the real world…
don’t you just wanna flip that paper
over to see the picture?
You’ve been had…you’re engaged!
What was it about that paper that made you pick it up and get engaged?
It was just a picture…but a very well placed picture. And that picture is an example of scroll curiosity.
What the heck is scroll curiosity?
Scroll curiosity is careful placement of a picture so your visitors only see part of it…until they scroll down the page.
Most people can’t stand an incomplete picture. You’ve probably seen many examples of visual/mental tricks where your mind fills in missing pieces of a picture.
With scroll curiosity, you setup a picture on the page so that the only way people can complete the picture is to scroll down.
People scroll down to satisfy their curiosity, and at the same time you have them more fully engaged in your content.
When Should I use Scroll Curiosity?
If you can’t tell your complete sales story “above the fold” (the part of your page that’s seen without scrolling down) you should test scroll curiosity.
We know that many first-time visitors spend less than 8 seconds on a web page. They determine whether to stay or leave after a quick glance!
You’ve only got a quick glance to grab that first time visitor’s attention and get them engaged. If they’re not engaged right away, you lose them…and you probably lose them forever.
Getting a first time visitor to scroll down is a win for you. The act of scrolling is a micro-conversion, a small act that can lead to bigger acts, like a subscription or a purchase.
If you’ve got a landing page with lots of traffic from first time visitors, that’s a great place to test scroll curiosity.
Where do I place the picture?
For best results, place the picture so that most of your visitors will see more than a sliver of it, but not enough to know exactly what it is. You’ve got to leave them wanting to see the rest of the picture.
If you want to be precise about placement of the picture, check your web stats to see the screen resolution that most of your users are running. Google Analytics gives you this info in Screen Resolutions Report (under the Visitors, Browser Capabilities).
But you don’t have to get too hung up on perfect placement, because even the small percentage of people with huge monitors and mega-pixel resolution will get the benefit of your picture and a well written caption.
Wait a minute, I’m supposed to keep everything above the fold…
Well, you’re also supposed to tell the full story. Not many of those fit above the fold for all your visitors.
Sure, you have to put your best, high impact stuff above the fold, but they’ve got to be able to see all the details too.
It’s important that new visitors immediately know that you’ve got all those details for them too. Getting them to actively scroll down is a huge step…one of those small steps (or commitments) along the way to a subscription or sale…
But I Don’t Have any Pictures…
That’s OK, it doesn’t have to be a picture. You could use a table, illustration, chart, graph or even a pull quote (a quote pulled from the story and displayed in large type nearby).
Be creative, anything you have that might get them to scroll down to see more could work.
How about a Couple of Examples?
First, have a look at the picture of the newspaper above. Notice the clever placement of the photo on the newspaper? It’s just showing a bit above the fold.
Don’t you just wanna reach into that photo, grab the paper, flip it over and have a look at the rest of the picture?
The second example is the same picture. Did you notice it’s placement on this web page? If your screen resolution is 1024×768, you would have seen just enough to activate your curiosity.
If you have higher resolution, you might have seen the entire picture, and been drawn into the article by the caption…gotcha either way.
Summary…
Scroll curiosity is all about showing enough of a picture to get people interested, but not enough for them to “get” the entire picture.
The idea behind scroll curiosity is to compel your visitor to scroll down, so they get engaged and get into your content.
So don’t let people leave your newspaper…er, website…on the coffee table. Test scroll curiosity on your site to see if you can activate your visitor’s curiosity and pull them right into the heart of your content.