Finalsite + CrazyEgg: Read and analyze a scrollmap report

Avatar
Misty Flowers

This article guides how to read and analyze a CrazyEgg scrollmap report, including how to use the average fold and how to spot buried content.

💡 Quick answers

  • What does a scrollmap show? How far visitors scroll and where attention fades. See the scrollmap report documentation.
  • What do the colors mean? White and red areas held attention. Blue areas were scrolled past or left behind.
  • What is the average fold? The point on the page that most visitors see without scrolling.
  • What should move up? Important links, buttons, and deadlines that sit in blue areas.

Before you start

This article is part of the Finalsite + CrazyEgg series in Finalsite Support. Looking for another Finalsite article? Check out the full set:

In this article

Understand what a scrollmap shows

A scrollmap colors a page by how much time visitors spent looking at each section (see also the CrazyEgg YouTube tutorials). Pages are not always most popular at the top and least popular at the bottom; a scrollmap shows what visitors scroll past and where they stop.

Color What it means
White and red Visitors spent time looking at this section. These are the hot, engaging parts of the page.
Blue Visitors scrolled past this section or left the page. These are the cold parts.

CrazyEgg counts an impression only when a visitor stops scrolling and the section is in the viewable area of the browser. A section that visitors scroll straight past receives none.

CrazyEgg scrollmap for a sample school district home page. A dashed line labeled Average Fold marks what most visitors see without scrolling. Sections further down the page appear in blue, meaning fewer visitors reached them. A color legend runs from more popular to less popular.

A scrollmap shows how far visitors scroll. The average fold line marks what most visitors see without scrolling; cooler colors show content fewer visitors reached.

Example CrazyEgg scrollmap. Yellow and red areas show where visitors spent time, and a dashed line marks the average fold at 709 pixels.

Example scrollmap with warm areas where visitors spent time. Source: CrazyEgg.

Use the average fold

The average fold line shows what visitors see, on average, before they scroll, along with a pixel value. Important items belong above that line or in the warm areas below it. Hovering along the page shows the popularity and impression count for each area, so a button that sits below the halfway point of views can be moved higher.

The same pattern shows up in research. In an eyetracking study, Nielsen Norman Group found that visitors spent about 57% of their page-viewing time above the fold and about 74% in the first two screenfuls.

Act on what the scrollmap shows

Move key content up

Place tour buttons, inquiry links, and deadlines where the scrollmap is still warm.

Add cues to keep visitors scrolling

Large blocks of empty space can look like the end of a page. Nielsen Norman Group calls these false floors and suggests cues, such as text that is partly cut off, to show that more content is below.

Shorten long pages

If attention fades well before the end, reorder the page so the most important sections come first, or trim sections few visitors reach.

 Real-world scenarios

  • Admissions inquiry button sits below the fold. The scrollmap shows most visitors stop scrolling before the button. Moving it higher puts it where visitors already look.

Still have questions about CrazyEgg?

Was this article helpful?
0 out of 0 found this helpful

Comments

0 comments

Please Sign in to leave a comment if you don't see the comment box below.