FoldSpy Helps to Optimize Your Site Layout and Ad Placements

It’s generally easily to manipulate the ad placement on your website and tweak it for optimal performance but one should note that there are some factors outside of your control.

These include the different browser, operating system and screen resolution used by the visitors on your website. What you perceive to be a highly visible ad placement will often differ from what your visitors see.

Enter FoldSpy, a new application which allows you to determine how your site looks to your visitors, while offering an effective way to set up your ad placement scheme.

I first came across FoldSpy on Read/Write Web and I thought I’ll do a short write up as it may help you to better optimize the ad placement for your website.


Discovering Your Web site’s Fold

Above the Fold is a graphic/web design term which refers to the area of a web page which can be viewed in a browser without the viewer scrolling down.

FoldSpy’s aim is to help you find out what areas of your website are above the fold along with the percentage of visitors who will view the fold area.

This helps you to amass date on visitor browser, OS or resolution, thereby allowing you to optimize your site layout by putting your ads or relevant content in the highly visible fold area.

FoldSpy is most useful for people who need real data to make important layout decisions. It can answer questions like “where do I put this ad if I want 85% of my visitors to see it without scrolling?” Now, you can find the answer in seconds and because the FoldSpy data is displayed in-place, on your site, the answer can be viewed in a way that’s most useful.

Setting up and Playing with FoldSpy

Setting up FoldSpy is a breeze and it only took around 1 minute to sign up and install the script. Very hassle-free. After the code is installed, a javascript overlay shows up which allows me to determine the size of Dosh Dosh’s fold area.

A tool bar at the button shows me the percentage of people who see the section that I’ve highlighted without scrolling.

Apart from the default drag overlay which allows you to frame your selected area, there’s also a gradient overlay which allows you to instantly view the percentage of people who will view a website as you hover your mouse over the screen.

If you want to try how FoldSpy works, you can click here to play around with the javascript overlay on Dosh Dosh.


FoldSpy’s Source of Data

FoldSpy currently aggregates global browser data from FoldSpy users worldwide. According to their TOS, FoldSpy will collect the browser stats (and nothing else) of every 10th visitor that lands on your website.

Apparently all the collected data serves as the basis for the potential fold percentages that you see.

This differs from FoldSpy’s Pro version ($6/mth), which records stats from your site alone, therefore allowing you to profile of all your site visitors. This would give you more accurate statistics, then if you were to use the global data available.


Choosing the Right Profit Model for a Web Application

FoldSpy seems like a nice application although you’ll have to shell up a monthly fee for statistics that are really relevant to your optimization goals.

The main problem I see with FoldSpy’s profit model is this: Potential customers may sign up with the Pro plan for one or two months and then cancel their account.

Why? Because there doesn’t seem to be any real benefit to stay on as a paying customer. The fold doesn’t change drastically. Your visitors won’t evolve that much as well. Statistical averages of existing data do already provide workable data for most ad optimization plans.

Continuously monitoring the fold may be redundant when your site design doesn’t undergo overhauls often.

Eoghan McCabe, the Founder of FoldSpy seems like a decent guy and I’ll hate to see a new web app like FoldSpy go down without making any real money.

Recursive income is ideal for most start-ups as it provides seed money to fund future developments. Perhaps FoldSpy should offer longer subscription terms (6 to 12 months) with specific discounts to lock in interested customers.

Integration of heatmap overlays or other dynamic features for Pro customers would also provide more additional incentives for continued subscription as well.

If you have any time to spare, you may want to try out FoldSpy in order to get a quick overview of your web site’s fold area.