WHY SLIDERS ON YOUR HOME PAGE WEBSITE ARE NOT A GOOD IDEA
If your goal is to increase traffic, attract more clients to your website and increase conversions then it’s time to delete those sliders on your homepage. We are talking about the first thing people see when they land on your site. An animated slideshow with a number of slides and text “above the fold”. (A newspaper term, defining the most important content that is above the fold dividing the first page of the newspaper.)
“Above the fold” is your prime real estate to capture your users attention and explain in quick and simple terms how you can help them and solve their problems. In Newspapers, Above the fold contained the most important message or headline of that day.
WHY SHOULD I DELETE MY SLIDERS
1. Approximately ONLY 1% of users interact with sliders on a Homepage, most ignore and scroll past or leave your website.
2. Sliders and their images are usually large and your webpage needs extra code to create the animated slideshow. This extra code slows the loading of your site, frustrating your users. Have you timed how long your slider takes to load?
3. Multiple sliders with different messages divide the users attention and cause confusion. The message needs to be simple and clear for your users. It’s as if you cannot decide on the most important message or call to action so throw in all the messages or headlines across multiples slides.
4. People usually ignore sliders, and as a result hey will scroll past or leave the page. This means they are missing what should be the most important message or call to action on your site. This is a waste of the most important section of your website.
THE TAKEAWAY
If you call to a neighbours house and they have four front doors, wouldn’t it confuse you? which one should I knock on? It’s far better to have one image and a clear message for your potential customers to see.
Google rewards websites who follow their guidelines and provide a great User Experience (UX) for their users, unfortunately a slideshow above the fold on your homepage can hamper your potential clients experience by frustrating and confusing them. This can harm your rankings and also cause your visitors to leave your site.
Yoast has a good article on sliders and SEO which you can read here
What are your thoughts on slideshows ?
