Scroll depth: what it tells you and what it does not

Pageviews tell you a page was opened. Scroll depth tells you how much of it was seen. Put together, they separate the pages people read from the pages people leave.

How it is measured

For each page view, the deepest point of the page that appeared on screen, as a percentage of the page height. If someone reads to the end of a 3,000-pixel article on an 800-pixel screen, that is 100 %. If they stop after the first screen, about 27 %. A page shorter than the screen counts as 100 %, because everything was visible without scrolling.

The dashboard shows the average per page over the period you choose.

Read it against the page's purpose

The same number means different things on different pages.

• Articles and guides. Depth is close to a reading measure. Below 40 % on a long article means most people did not get past the introduction.
• Landing pages. The decision often happens in the first screen. A low depth with good conversions is fine; a low depth with poor conversions points at the top of the page, not the bottom.
• Product pages. People who are ready to buy click "Add to cart" without scrolling. Look at depth together with your add-to-cart goal.
• Home pages. Mostly navigation. Depth says little; what matters is where people go next, which the entry and exit lists show.

Patterns worth acting on

A long article stuck around 30 %. The introduction is not doing its job. Put the answer the title promises in the first two paragraphs and move background lower.

A sharp difference between similar pages. Two guides of the same length, one at 75 % and one at 35 %. Compare the first screen of each: headline, first paragraph, the size of the image above the text.

High depth, high exit. People read to the end and leave. The end of the page has nothing to do: add the next step, a related guide or the call to action.

Depth drops after a redesign. Compare the two periods with a custom date range. A large hero image or a cookie banner covering the screen pushes the content down.

What it cannot tell you

Scroll depth does not show whether someone read or skimmed, or where on the page they looked. It cannot tell you why someone left. And because Statsdot records it without any visitor code, it cannot be split by source or country: it is a property of the page, not of a visitor. If you need to know whether visitors from a campaign read further, compare the campaign's landing pages instead.

Turning it on in Statsdot

Scroll depth is optional. Turn it on in the site settings and add the small second script shown there; the main script stays under 1 KB for everyone else. See the scroll depth guide.