Take inventory of the top of your homepage, the part that shows before anyone scrolls. On most sites it's the logo, the menu, a slider of photos and a tagline. Every one of those is a default, and every one is taking space from something that would sell. The top of the page is for the promise, the proof and the next step, because it's the only part of the site every visitor is guaranteed to see. Knowing what to put above the fold on a website is half the brief. The other half is knowing what to take out to make room for it.
Why the first screen is worth more than the rest of the page combined
Every visitor sees the top. Not most of them, every one. Whatever you put there gets read by a hundred percent of your traffic, and on a phone, where people barely scroll past the first screen, it's often the only thing that gets read at all. That makes it the highest-value space on the site by a wide margin. Change a line in the footer and a handful of people notice. Change the line at the top and you've changed the site for everyone who ever visits it.
Now look at what the defaults do with that space. The logo, large, top-left or dead center, is the first thing a visitor's eye lands on, and people click it out of habit. It reloads the homepage, and a visitor who has clicked once and gone nowhere is a visitor on the way out. The menu offers them six or seven places to go, and one of them, About, walks them off the path that leads to a call. The slider rotates past whatever it was saying before they've finished reading it. The tagline, written to sound like a brand, says nothing a stranger can act on. The most valuable space on the site is being used as a sign with the company's name on it, with exits attached.
What to put above the fold on a website: the promise, the proof and the next step
Treat the top as one space with one job, and give it three things. The promise first: what this is, who it's for and the outcome, in words a stranger understands at a glance. I've written up the test for this, the five-second test, and the top either passes it or nothing below it matters. One audience, one outcome. If the headline is working hard to sound clever, it isn't working.
The proof second, and close to the headline. A trust signal sitting next to the promise anchors belief faster than another line of benefits does, because the stranger's real question is whether this works for people like them, and a number answers that before they've read a benefit. "Used by 10,000 professionals" does more in the headline area than a fourth bullet point ever will. I studied a case where a book funnel used its top space for "over 6,000 copies sold" and real customer photos instead of a logo, and conversions lifted by more than forty percent. That was a book page, not a service homepage, so I won't promise you the number. I'll promise the mechanism: proof in the first screen beats a logo in the first screen. And if you don't have a number yet, anchor on intent instead. "Built for owners who are done losing jobs to a slow quote" names the audience and implies scale without claiming a figure you can't back.
The next step last, and only one of them. For a service, that's rarely "buy now." A stranger who doesn't understand the value yet and sees a price button clicks it to check the price, and now they're judging cost before they've seen what it's worth. A smaller step holds them: "See how it works." Low commitment, keeps them moving, and once someone has given you a little attention they tend to keep going. Three things, one space. Which means the defaults currently sitting in that space have to go somewhere.
Above the fold is one space with one job: make a stranger think "this is for me, I believe it, and I know what to do next." Any element that doesn't do one of those three is taking the space from one that would.
What to take out to make room: my position on sliders, menus and the logo
In order. The slider goes. My position is that there's no auto-rotating slider above the fold on a service site. Some people will tell you a carousel can work if it engages instantly, and maybe it can. But a slider is usually the designer's way of avoiding the decision about what the one message is, and the visitor pays for that indecision in the only seconds that count. Make the decision. One headline, one still image, and stack the proof under the headline instead of rotating it.
The menu shrinks. Keep what a buyer needs to reach a decision and lose the links that lead away from it. About is the usual leak, and the fix isn't deleting who you are. If the story matters to the sale, put the one line of it that matters next to the proof, where it does some work, and let the rest live further down. The logo stays, small, in the corner, where it confirms whose site this is without being the thing the eye lands on. The top is for messaging, not the logo. Apply that rule and the mockup comes back looking different enough that you'll want to know how to ask for it in the first place.
How to brief the designer, or judge the mockup you already have
Write three lines before anyone opens a design tool. The promise, in one sentence a stranger could repeat back to you. The proof you can show: a number, a name, a photo of a real customer, or the intent line if you have none of those yet. The next step, as the exact words on the button. Hand those three lines to the designer with two instructions. The first screen contains these and nothing that pulls away from them. And the defaults are handled the way the last section says: one still image, a short menu, a small logo in the corner. A good designer can work with that, because it says what the page is for instead of what it should look like.
If the mockup already exists, judge it with your thumb. Cover the logo and the menu and look at what's left. Can you read the promise? Is there proof next to it? Is there one obvious thing to click? If what's left is a photo and a tagline, you've been sent a brochure with your name on it, and the space every visitor sees holds nothing that sells. Ask for the top again before you approve anything below it. I've said that a fair builder shows you the top of the homepage before you pay. This is what you're looking at when they do.
The first screen gets more of my time than anything else on a site, because it's the one decision the rest of the page depends on. If you want the promise, the proof and the next step written and laid out before a pixel gets drawn, that's the first step of my website design work, and it's the step most builders skip on the way to the slider.
Common questions
What should go above the fold on a website?
The promise (what this is, who it's for, the outcome), proof next to it (a number, a name, a real customer), and one next step. Everything a stranger needs to think: this is for me, I believe it, I know what to do. Not a big logo, a big menu and a slider.
Should my homepage have a slider or carousel?
Not above the fold on a service site. The message a visitor needs is on slide one and gone before they've read it. Decide on the one message, use one headline and one image, and stack proof underneath instead of rotating it.
Is it bad to have the logo at the top of the website?
A small logo in the corner is fine. A large logo as the first thing the eye lands on wastes the most valuable space on the site: people click it out of habit and it reloads the page. Give that spot to the promise and the proof.
Micah Jacobi
Marketing specialist focused on the systems that turn traffic into revenue, SEO, websites, email & SMS, and paid media. More about me →