You know those images on the homepages of websites that change and promote different things?
We call them “sliders” (or sometimes “carousels”). Have you noticed how ubiquitous sliders have become in website design?
It’s easy to understand why they are so popular. For one thing, they provide a way to double, triple, quadruple (or even more) the usage of a very valuable real estate slot on a page with lots to promote and limited space to do it. They are a great way to switch out content to promote new and timely things like sales and special events.
Also, because they are both prominent and relatively easy to update, changing a slider is a small action that can make big changes to a site to give it an updated look and feel.
So, with all of these advantages, what’s not to like about sliders?
It turns out that sliders really are a mixed blessing.
Here are Erika’s Truths about Sliders:
Plus, businesses frequently use them really poorly:
As you will see, I realized while writing this that I am not using the slider on my own site in the best way possible. Oops.
Some things to keep in mind:
There is at least one usability study that finds that site visitors can sometimes entirely miss information that is placed on a slider.
So, what is my recommendation?
First, ask yourself if you really need a slider or if you are just trying to follow a trend. Then, carefully consider the type of information you need to display on your site and determine if any of that is BEST displayed in a slider.
If you run a bed and breakfast, for example, your slider could have images of different rooms or different angles of the the same room. An art gallery might use a slider to give visitors a preview of the range of works in a current exhibit, while keeping information such as the gallery’s hours and address as static content on the home page.
At Spring Insight, we are increasingly finding that many sites do not meet the criteria for including a slider; this includes the Spring Insight home page. After writing this, I am probably taking the slider off of our site. Many of the sites we are building for clients these days are slider-free.
Sliders can be done well. Just be mindful of how—and why—you are using a slider.