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Content Carousels/Sliders on the Homepage

Clients love carousels because they allow you to cram more content onto the homepage. However research into carousels indicate that they are not effective and have a very poor click through rate.

Clients love carousels because they allow you to cram more content onto the homepage. However research into carousels indicate that they are not effective and have a very poor click through rate.

This study, by the Nielsen Norman Group, showed that users ignore carousels, especially carousels that auto rotate. This is further supported by Carousel interaction Stats which indicate taht approximately 1% of visitors will click on a carousel - 84% of that 1% of clicks are on the first item. Clearly the second, third or further items will effectively never be clicked on or even viewed.

Auto Advancing Carousels or Sliders

What about auto advancing carousels? The problem with these is that they often advance to quickly not allowing users to finish reading the slide they are on. Additionally with too much information to view users will not remember what is important.

The downsides to Carousels or Sliders

  1. Sliders prevent people from reading your content. While waiting for the slider users may get frustrated either because the slide moves too slowly or too fast and they don't have enough time to read the content. The result the visitor leaves or misses the important content
  2. Carousels or Sliders are used when a company doesn't have a focus on it's home page. This results in choice paralysis. Removing sliders has resulted in conversion rates increases of 13%-80%.
  3. Hidden Content. Content that you want to feature is actually hidden for most visitors. For example if you have a slider with four slides and a visitor would be converted by one of the slides that means that 75% of the time they will see that slide. Missed Opportunities.

What Should I Use Instead of a Carousel or Slider?

Instead in place of a carousel/slider feature the most important message/content in that spot and you will have your visitors attention. Periodically be sure to update this with new featured content. If you really feel the need to have more than one primary message then you can set your web site to display one message randomly on each page load. This gets each message out and doesn't distract the user.

  1. One Hero image. This can be updated as you want to feature new content.
  2. A row of 2-4 blocks with a small images, titles and descriptions