Any way to reduce the height of a hero web part?

Toby McDaid  Generally speaking, if you don't see a button or control that allows you to do a thing, then you probably can't. In this case, the Hero web part is pretty unmodifiable. You get boxes or layers. That's it.  All web parts are responsive, so they will adapt to the size of the column or page, but you cannot control how that happens. 

The hero web part is designed to give that look where it's the ONLY thing people see when they open the page on a regular sized monitor or on their phone. Personally, I have found that people often don't know to scroll down so that can be a problem. Sometimes changing the column background color in the next section can be a hint.

You can use a Quick Links web part in a grid format - not as pretty as a hero, but the links are large and graphic.