**This blogpost is based on a recent webinar on sliders where I walk gold members through exactly why sliders don’t work and how to implement new strategies.
-Melodie Moore
Are you one of the many business owners or website administrators who have fallen prey to the image slider myth?
Until recently, web design “gurus” have promoted the use of sliders on homepages. Unfortunately, it’s recently been discovered that nothing kills your conversion ratings better than using an image slider.
Why do people use sliders?
They look slick. So slick in fact that we installed one on the new PaulTobey.com website. However, when re-designing the Training Business Pros website we are not only not doing a slider but also going back and taking it off the Paultobey.com website.
Why are we so against sliders?
They are everywhere online right now just check out any theme directory website and you can’t help but trip over them over and over again. They look great, but you know what we love more than looking great?
Effectiveness.
That’s what it comes down to. I fell madly in love with all the fantastic sliding in and out and spin etc but NOTHING beats effectiveness no matter how great it looks.
There are very few things the online community (marketers, conversion specialists, usability experts, etc) agree on and this is one of them.
Using an image slider WILL hurt your conversion rates. (How many people take the action you want them to take.
Why don’t they work?
- Banner blindness or in-attentional blindness is when someone fails to recognize unexpected stimuli in plain sight. You would be stunned at how much you don’t notice when you are focusing on something else. Essentially this means that when you don’t expect something to happen your mind ignores the stimulus and scrolls down or navigates away.
- More often than not sliders don’t translate well to mobile.
- They push content down and hurt your Google ranking (google likes when the content is at the top of the page).
- They water down your message.
Too Many Messages Equals No Message: People can’t focus on any one thing long enough to be convinced to do something about it.
The Numbers Just Don’t Lie…
If 500 people go to your website, typically you’ll have 5 people click on that slider. 3.5 of those will click on the first image slider. (That’s less than 1%)
From a conversion standpoint, we are looking for at least 5 – 30%.
Something has to change.
If You Must Use A Slider (and don’t say I didn’t warn you)…
- Give the user COMPLETE control (no automation)
- Showcase options and keep then in the same context
- SIMPLE not overwhelming
- Don’t let the slide dominate the page
- Make the call the action on each the same or similar
- Don’t highlight special deals or offers or try to convert
Wow . . . Melody, I trust your experience and skills. No more sliders? I DID have a certain bad feeling about sliders lately. Everyone going nuts about them. So I created a smaller slider on my redesigned website but only on the index page. Take a look at the smaller slider and let me know what you think. http://www.onlinetoday.ca
Melody, after doing more research and further understanding your post here, I deleted the slider altogether. Not only a much faster loading page, also more direct above the fold content one page at a time. Thank you for your help.
Thanks. Always love to hear good news.