What goes above the fold on an agency homepage?

Five things belong in the first screen of an insurance agency homepage: a headline that says who you help and where, the lines of insurance you actually write, a phone number someone can tap, one clear next step, and one specific reason to trust you. That's the whole list. Everything else (your story, the carrier logos, the plan explainers, the blog) can sit one scroll down, where people who stay will find it. Most agency homepages get this backwards. They lead with a slogan and a stock photo and leave the visitor to work out whether this agent sells Medicare in their county.

Does "above the fold" still matter?

Less than it used to, but more than some designers will tell you. Nielsen Norman Group's eyetracking research, "Scrolling and Attention" (2018), found people spent about 57% of their page-viewing time above the fold, down from 80% in its 2010 study. In the same research, 74% of viewing time went to the first two screenfuls. People scroll now. They still give the top of the page most of their attention, and they decide there whether to scroll at all.

The honest counterpoint: on a phone, "the fold" is a moving target. Screen sizes vary, browser bars appear and disappear, and nobody can promise a given element lands above it on every device. So treat the fold as a priority order rather than a pixel line. The things that answer "am I in the right place, and how do I reach this person?" go first. Everything else waits its turn.

What should be above the fold on an insurance agency homepage?

Here's the checklist we build against, and how each item usually goes wrong:

Notice what's missing: your mission statement, your history, a list of every carrier you're appointed with, and a "Welcome to our website!" paragraph. They aren't bad content. They just don't answer the visitor's first two questions, so they don't get the most valuable space on the page.

What does the first screen look like on a phone?

Design it for the phone first, because the phone has the least room. On a typical screen you have space for roughly a headline, one supporting line, a button and a strip of trust, and that's it. A layout that works well stacks like this:

1. A slim header with your logo and a tap-to-call phone icon or number. No full menu, just the hamburger.
2. The headline, naming who and where, in large type.
3. One supporting line that lists your lines of insurance and the counties or states you serve.
4. The primary button, full width, easy to hit with a thumb.
5. The trust strip: your photo and name, or a review rating with the number of reviews.

Then add a sticky call bar at the bottom of the screen so the phone number stays one tap away as people scroll. We cover the call-versus-form decision in detail in do calls or web forms convert better for agents? The short version: lead with the call on mobile, especially for Medicare and final expense.

What should you take out of the first screen?

Most of the gains come from removing things, not adding them. The usual suspects:

• Rotating sliders. Each slide carries a different message, so none of them lands, and the one that's showing when the visitor arrives is chosen at random. Pick the best slide and delete the rest.
• Pop-ups on arrival. Google's own guidance on intrusive interstitials and dialogs says overlays that block content "may frustrate" users and can make your content harder for search engines to understand. A newsletter box that covers your phone number on a phone screen is a lead you paid for and then pushed away.
• Heavy hero images and background video. Google's Largest Contentful Paint guidance sets "good" at 2.5 seconds or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. On most homepages the largest element is the hero, so a 4MB photo or an autoplaying video is often the reason the page feels slow. Compress the image, or let the headline be the largest thing on screen.
• Generic stock photography. A grinning family on a beach tells the visitor nothing. A real photo of you, even an average one, tells them a licensed person is behind the site.
• Competing calls to action. If everything is a button, nothing is. One primary action, plus the phone number, is enough.

Where does the Medicare disclaimer go?

If you sell Medicare Advantage or Part D plans for more than one carrier, CMS treats you as a third-party marketing organization, and 42 CFR 422.2267(e)(41) requires the TPMO disclaimer to be "prominently displayed on TPMO websites." If you don't sell every plan in the area, that disclaimer starts with "We do not offer every plan available in your area."

The rule says prominently displayed. It doesn't say above the fold. In practice, many agents put it in a clearly visible band directly below the hero rather than in tiny footer type, which keeps the first screen clean without hiding anything. Carriers and FMOs often have their own placement expectations, so confirm with yours before you go live. This is your obligation as the agent, and this is not legal advice.

Does the top of the page matter for AI search?

It helps, mostly because of what it forces you to write. An assistant answering "who's a Medicare agent near me in Tulsa?" needs plain facts it can pass along: who you are, what you sell, where, and how to reach you. A headline that states those things in text, matching the details in your structured data and your Google Business Profile, gives a model something clear to quote. A slogan over a background image gives it nothing. No one can promise a citation, and we won't. But the facts that answer the human visitor's first question are the same facts a model looks for, which is the core idea in our AEO guide for insurance agents.

Frequently asked questions

Where we fit

Every site we build ships with a first screen arranged in this order: who and where, your lines, tap-to-call, one primary action and a trust strip, with the disclaimer placement agreed with you during the build. You can see how that looks across our templates on the what you get page. And if you want the full list of what the rest of the site needs, our insurance agent website checklist picks up where this post leaves off.