In a bid to improve the efficiency of your website and make the ‘web better for everyone’ Google yesterday announced the release of a new tool into Google Labs that allows you to see how people see your website through different browser sizes. The new tool called simply Browser Size overlays a transparent image over the top of any website you enter and the image displays the percentage of users that can see your content without having to scroll.

It is common practice for any web designer/online marketer to place important information of a page above the fold. This is common sense as like with any print media it is about engaging the audience as quickly as possible. However when it comes to search in particular engaging your audience is that bit trickier. You only have a matter of seconds to prove your worthy of a users search query before they click straight back off.

However unlike print media it is difficult to gage what ‘above the fold’ actually means for online as there is a great range of different ways people can view a page. There are many factors that play a part in the size of a page being viewed and these include the increasing amount f different monitor sizes, different browsers and also toolbars which greatly compromise the size of the browser window.

For this reason you may think that you have placed all the important content appropriately on your page, interpreting it to be ‘above the fold’ when it is in fact only above the fold to 60% of visitors meaning 40% of visitors are not getting the full effect. This can result in you losing out on some of those important conversions and all because something simple such as the call to action or ‘buy now’ button is being tucked away ‘below the fold’.

So this tool from Google is very useful as you are now able to make a better informed decision on where to place these elements on your site/landing page. From this it is easier to follow the landing page optimisation strategy and get your pages spot on which will greatly help your SEO efforts and especially your PPC.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Google, Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.