After years of planning, architecting and laying out web pages, most of us tend to start relying on conventions – those patterns that worked in the past and are adopted by many. And of course, this isn’t by accident or a lack of inspiration. Among other things, conventions become established through familiarity. And when we’re talking about usability, familiarity has to be good thing. Right?

Familiarity, interestingly enough, isn’t always a good thing, and how we learn to respond to those familiar cues can be counterintuitive. We often pick up behaviours without even realizing, and these unspoken rules, habits, and practices are found in virtually any interaction we have with digital content.

Take the example of the classic billboard rotator. I’d estimate a good 80% or more corporate websites make use of such a feature, or a variant of one.

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I’ll admit that the billboard is one of my go-to features when producing a home or landing page layout. We’ve got high visibility, ample space for impactful imagery and messaging, flexible to feature multiple states of content? And hell, with their widespread application, our users are familiar with these things. Why would we not use one?

As it turns out, whether they consist of a simple text headline or animated with graphics and glitz – these elements virtually always exist at the very top of the page. And so regardless of the content or treatment, our instinct is to pass them over, often without even noticing.

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And I’m not just talking about banner blindness. Take LinkedIn’s home page (left) for example. The recommended articles at the very top of the page are carefully selected to align with our interests. And yet even with this level of customization, many of us instinctively move right past them. Not because they look like an advertisement, but simply because we’ve become accustomed to the priority real estate on a page being non-critical and worthy of overlooking.

Now I’m not suggesting we should be trying to trick our users by devising new, unexpected ways to inject our promotional messages. Nor am I saying this once-sacred space should now bill filled with low-priority content. But as designers, it’s clear that we need to adapt and respond to conventions that no longer work the way we would like them to. Which leads me to…

We all scroll, and you need to get over it

Closely tied to the above is the seemingly perennial issue of scrolling - the belief being that users will not scroll, thereby making any content below the digital fold nonexistent. There are so many flaws in this way of thinking, and yet rarely a week passes when I don’t hear it raised as a consideration by a client or colleague.

The fact is if we accept that users are passing over the real estate at the top of the page, where else is there to go but down? And conventions? Few software environments (aside from perhaps gaming) force the user into a fixed viewport. And as any modern OS indicates, even our device desktops are becoming fluid.

Twenty years ago, we needed to worry about websafe colours, and we’d obsess over image compression, spend hours fighting with framesets (!) and cramming as much content as possible in less than 500 pixels of depth. The web was virtually new to everyone, and we all needed to learn how to use it. 640 x 480 px was the norm, and a 56K dial-up connection was on par with even the most cutting-edge transfer speeds available today. Why, then do we continue to harp on the scrolling issue?

A 2014 Chartbeat report analyzing the behaviours of 1 million website visitors indicated that over 65% of our focus and engagement is closer to the middle of a page.

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Compare these findings to your own browsing habits. Does this come as any surprise?

Ultimately, our priority must be making content easy to find, and often that will be at the top of the page. But about the worst thing we can do as designers is compromise fundamental usability considerations like this in the name of having our self-serving content gain visibility. Let’s stop fooling ourselves into believing users will be captivated by the content that serves us best simply because of its placement on the page.

So, what’s the takeaway here? The top of our screen may not be the hot real estate it once was, but it’s not a dumping ground either. This remains an important area to make first impressions, and it will continue to play a role in how we present our content. That said, I’m suggesting this space be used as more of a transitional space, with calls to actions appearing elsewhere on the page.

There are always exceptions, and who knows how our behaviours will continue to evolve in future years? Perhaps we’ll come full circle and begin throwing our CTAs back up top. Or maybe the whole issue will become irrelevant thanks to new input or browsing technologies.

I believe that UX as a discipline is about balancing the needs of our customers with the needs of the business. It’s a delicate balance in the best of times, but when push comes to shove, the user must always come out on top. Their preferences and behaviours will change, and it’s us who must adapt to these changes – not the other way around.