Adopting the lingo of the old newspaper days, we say that something is ‘above the fold’ in the digital age if you can see it when a webpage loads without scrolling. Conventional wisdom in web design says that if something important is below the fold, it’s less likely to be seen, which is why you see so many top-heavy website designs out there, with a million pieces of content crammed in the first few hundred pixels.

For international design firm Huge Inc., “above the fold” design thinking is a huge pet peeve. In our own glossary of designer jargon, they told us that they “disliked” the term, because “although first impressions are very important, users will inevitably scroll down a page to see the remainder of the content.”

But that’s not just a baseless assertion: Huge researcher Rebecca Gordon and Creative Director Evan Dody tested 48 participants over three days, in which they measured scrolling activity across four different sites.

Furthermore, each site signaled the ability to scroll in its own different way:

• A control image, with no visual cues to scroll below the fold.

• A scroll arrow that cues users to scroll down.

• A short image, where users had to scroll to see above-the-fold content in entirety.