In your opinion, what are the most essential screen elements to display above the fold (i.e., portion of the screen user can view without scrolling down) on your home page, category pages, and product pages?

I know on product pages it's important to make the buy and checkout buttons easily accessible, but sometimes I wonder about putting them above the fold. If there is a lot of product detail you want the customer to read, shouldn't the buy button appear after all the information?

What other elements really should be above the fold?

Thankie.

I can't really answer your question directly and I don't think there is a simple answer. Some shops sell a lifestyle like Nooks and Niches but others want to sell products, cold hard and fast like coolights. Does that make sense? Nooks gives me the impression of how cool the candle I am going to buy is with lots of cool words to appeal to my love of contemporary luxury items but for say Coolights or giftbargains I just wanna buy a nice gift or tail lights for my car. One is a lifestyle the others are goods. Am I amking any sense?

One way of working it out would be to do one or both of two things....

Think about your shop as being a similar high street one, what brings in shoppers to a high street store? Garments in the window so you can judge the quality/stlye of the good (even the types of goods themselves i.e. clothes, furniture etc). Style of the shop, is it clean, simple, have a good logo and have a fashionable look or is it a tatty sign written in paint. Comments on the windows, Sales for example.

Also to convince your self why not keep a notepad by the side of your PC and make a note when you come across a site and think, hmm nice and are tempted to go in. What attracted you? Lots of good looking items, a nice paragraph about what the shop's mission statement, colours, large menu of items and from that list make your choice as to what to put. Even better is to also have a list of what you didn't like. Too much small text, not enough pictures, no idea of what the site is about. From that list work out what would work best on your site.

Hope this helps