Business broadband customers are being told to focus on designing the key aspects of their website in order to attract and retain visitors.

Jakob Nielsen, a web usability expert, reported research on his blog which suggests that web users spend 80 per cent of their time looking at information above the "page fold" – that is, the part of the site that loads into the browser and can be viewed without scrolling down.

He advises that people will look down a page if the layout encourages scanning and if the initially viewable information makes them believe it will be worth their time to scroll down.

However, user researcher Louise Ferguson has pointed out that, in content-rich pages, it's fine to have longer pages for a single item of material, as users can become frustrated if they have to continually click to separate pages for closely-related material.

She added: "Don't forget that many people will be scanning rather than reading longer material, so you need to give them the tools to do that effectively."

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