I've always been of the belief that "the fold" is a bit of a misnomer, and indeed there's a whole bunch of research (including material posted on this very site) suggesting that users don't have a problem with scrolling down the page to explore content. While it's obviously crucial that important information and calls to action are made visually prominent and easy locatable, this has always been more of a conversation around weighting of design and a 'visual hierarchy' to me.
Recently I've been working with a client who's extremely focused around this concept of "the fold", and the most important thing to them is making sure that X Y and Z all sit above the fold at all times.
I've tried to inform them that browser/resolution statistics and web-enabled devices are so variable there is no one true "page fold", users will happily scroll down the page to continue reading content provided they are interested, and that it's not necessary to cram all of content and functionality into the uppermost part of the page. They don't seem to be buying it however, and I was wondering about how I could go about trying to get this message across.
In your experience, what is the best way to teach clients about the reality of "the fold" (and other myths like 'the homepage must have everything'...) without just sending them links to web articles?
Referer:
tag. If a user knows that a site contains what he's looking for, he'll scroll to get it. If a user arrives at a site through a search engine and what the user sees isn't immediately of interest, he may be more inclined to leave the site and look at the search engine's other suggestions than try to look through the site.