I am not so sure I agree that 90% of internet surfers don't scroll down.
Most user's major complaint about scrolling is over any page where you must horizontally scroll. Vertical scrolling doesn't usually bother users unless it goes on endlessly such as more then the length of two pages. These types of sites have chosen to do long listings of various information rather then separating them into appropriately titled pages. This is sloppy by design standards but viewers will scroll it if their interest has been tweeked. I do feel that with a little better planning and logical breaks in information into pages this can be avoided and give the website a more fluid and professional look and feel. I regularly read webpages where I scroll quite a bit to read an article and I don't mind scrolling down for information as I read, but, the information is generally a single article, not groupings of different topics.
I think people have to keep in mind what the purpose of their site is and if they are going to do it themselves, learn to plan for that purpose. As a software developer and website designer, I never just sit down and start writing code or throwing a website together. Even if I was using the site builder I would still sit and plan with paper and pencil, mapping out purpose and requirements. If I am responsible for the conent of the site as well as the design, I will make sure I have rough drafts for most if not all of it before I even determine a design.
Size is always a consideration. There is only so much viewable area in any given brower. When I design, I check and test the behavior of my sites in all major browser versions such as Firefox (which is rapidly gaining on IE in usage), IE, Opera and Netscape. For Netscape I test the current version and the problematic version 4. I want to make sure that the site works and looks the same in them all.
There are also average viewable sizes for different screen resolutions. For instance, many users browse at an 800x600 (this in pixels) resolution whicih gives a viewable browser size of roughly 750x420. More and more users are browsing at 1024x768. The viewable area for that is about 950x600. Generally we do our best to design within the confines of the parameters for whatever resolution we are targeting. Which one we target often depends on who the target audience is and their browsing statistics. You never want to go wider then your target resolution viewable area because as I said before, horizontal scrolling is highly annoying to viewers. Vertical scrolling is much more natural for reading and if most have been interested enough to read what you have put in the viewable area, they will not mind scroling down to read more. In that respect, I do agree that you must capture your reader's attention and you don't have alot of time to do that. If you don't do that in the viewable area it really doesn't matter how much is down below it because they will never see it. The thing is, in light of viewable area and screen resolution, if you think about it, someone browsing at 800x600 is going to have less viewable area and will definitely scroll vertically more then someone at a higher resolution. Throw in a persons monitor size and you have more variables in determining how much scrolling someone will have to do. This is why most designers try to stick to standards and design for a specific target resolution.
I have not played around with the sitebuilder very much, I have been too busy with rock band and magician sites to play with it much. I also do much of my design work as full Flash sites rather then html because of who my clients are. My feeling about the site builder is that if you chose a template you liked and carefully planned your content you should not have much trouble with excessive scrolling. You can also do as I do, besides testing in various browsers, change your monitor resolutions to various settings such as 800x600 and 1024x768 and test to see whether it forces horizontal scrolling and how much vertical scrolling is involved. Check other people's sites out at different resolutions to get an idea of what I mean. I did test a page of my site with the site builder at an 800x600 resolution and found there to be no horizontal scrolling and a small amount of vertical scrolling, so using the site builder should make this a non issue for folks.
The sitebuilder allows you six pages of content which is quite a bit of space to get said what most people need too. My brother did his site for his lawnmower business all by himself and he is about as non-technical as they come. If he can do it anyone can.
Just plan and use common sense about the length of the pages. Don't be afraid of some vertical scrolling and avoid horizontal scrolling and things will be fine.
Alot of what I said, may seem a bit overwhelming to some, but please don't let it. The sitebuilder helps you avoid many of the pitfalls of web design. If you are not using the sitebuilder and building it yourself there are many of us who can help you with that. The only thing I would ask, is that if you do ask for my help or opinion please understand I will be completely honest. I am not one to say something looks good if I do not think it does. I do not however, say critical things in order to hurt people's feelings. It is only so they can have a better looking website and learn. Web design is not easy and there is a lot to it. I think I have learned many of my lessons the hard way and have had more then a few tell me some of what I did looked terrible. I am still growing and learning my craft. There is a balance between marketer and web designer that must be reached. As a designer there are many things I can do but that doesn't mean I should, I have to keep in mind the needs and purpose of the site. Marketers on the other hand, have some pretty strange ideas about web design. Some of their worst ideas are "popup windows" or disabling the back button so a user must close the browser to escape their site or type a previous address into the address bar to get where they were. If you want to annoy visitors, do those two things or place alot of flashy animated gifs to draw attention to parts of your site. I prefer the KISS method of doing things and not annoying visitors. I know if it would annoy me, I won't do it to a site visitor. This last part is just my opinion and you can take it for it what it's worth or leave it.
If I can be of assistance to anyone let me know even though I am booked pretty heavily at the moment with three websites approaching deadlines. Sorry if this was a bit long winded. If I didn't say some of it very well, forgive me, I just got home from a trip that included long hours of driving. Regardless of any incoherent rambling,, I hope this info is at least somewhat helpful to people.
Khristi
