preface
In web design terminology, the term Slider is used for a slideshow added to a web page(using the slider). There are many WordPress slider plugins available which allow you to create your sliders and add them to your home page, landing pages, posts, or anywhere you want.
Advantages / Disadvantages using the slider in website
when we want to talk about the Advantages /Disadvantages of using the slider on the website, first of all, we must describe the slider shortly. Advantages /Disadvantages of the slider is the high-level discussion. before using the slider preferred to read Advantages /disadvantages of slider option in this post.
What is the slider?
In web design terminology, the term Slider is used for a slideshow added to a web page. For using the slider there are many WordPress slider plugins available which allow you to create your sliders and add them to your home page, landing pages, posts, or anywhere you want.
Sliders can be used on all kinds of websites however they’re most commonly used on business websites or professional portfolio websites. To make a page look more organized – especially those with a large number of photos – sliders can continuously run or play the series of photos without the need to click anything on the part of the site visitor. This website design tool helps to create an organized and more interactive page.
What do you want the slider to achieve for your website?
Do you want the slider to provide information about your business? Is the slider intended to be a moving portfolio of your products and services? Will the slider be used to enhance your credibility by rotating the various testimonies from your clients? Regardless of what you want the slider to do, it will get the job done because everything will be in one place. The visitor will not go anywhere else.
Advantage of using the slider
Using sliders is a good way of creating an interactive page, mainly because the movement of the slideshow can instantly engage site visitors. People are generally visual when it comes to getting their attention, and that principle applies well in showing people slider images instead of words.
Visual appeal
One of the functions of sliders is to create pages that appeal visually and spark the interest of the website visitors. By displaying beautiful pictures on your sliders, there’s a better likelihood that your site visitors stick around to browse through the site and read more information about your business.
Stanford University which involved 2,500 respondents showed that 46.1% found website design is a serious indicator of credibility. A slider that is composed of beautiful, high-resolution images will certainly catch the eye of its visitor, compel him/her to stay longer, and potentially explore the other pages of the website.
Instant information
Important pieces of content can be easily displayed using sliders, and this technique adds more emphasis to what your company offers. It is easier to make specific information to stand out when you use sliders, mainly because of its interactivity.
Better display of textual content
While sliders are commonly used for images and photos, they are also good for text snippets. Testimonials of regular customers are best displayed using a slider.
Alternative form of advertising
Sliders can be used for telling stories about specific products or services. Website designers can maximize the use of sliders by featuring information or details in the form of silent ads to catch the interest of website visitors.
SAVE SPACE
Content sliders consolidate multiple pieces of content into a small space on your site, allowing you to fit more on-screen at any given time.
PROMOTE USER ENGAGEMENT
Well-implemented and designed content sliders are engaging for website visitors, and encourage them to stay on the page longer.
They act like a pit-stop on a long journey, allowing the user to take a break before continuing to scroll.
GOOD FOR USABILITY IN MEDIA-RICH PAGES
By consolidating media into one place, you give the user the ability to focus.
By placing your visual content in a slider, you allow the user to choose when they focus their attention on image/rich content, instead of breaking their reading flow. It lets users focus on discrete pieces of content.
USER-DIRECTED (MOSTLY)
The majority of content sliders can be controlled by the user, meaning they can progress through the content at their own pace, aiding their comprehension and retention of the information you’re providing.
If your website improves with any of the benefits above you are one of the candidates to use slider options on your website.
How we can use sliders correctly on our website
Use it as a marketing strategy to highlight packages, promos, or discounts
Sliders are the best tools to use if your website gets updated regularly and if you want to put real-time content. You can make use of sliders to post your latest promotions or events that you want to advertise. Make sure that your slider appears above the fold on your landing page, if you want to maximize the potential of getting more leads and sales.
Importing your photos from your social media account and putting them on your slider is also a good technique.
Use it to expound on what your website is all about
Aside from marketing your upcoming promotions, sliders can also promote your products and services, as well as your entire business. Depending on the content that you will put on the slider, this technique can give the site visitor instant access to information about your website or company.
Remember that the slider is a vibrant and attention-grabbing feature on the page. Because of this, make sure that the information that you put in the slider is concise and direct to the point.
Use CSS to customize the look of your sliders
Sure, sliders are commonly used for marketing reasons, but you should also put in mind that it should match your website design. The slider will probably be one of the highlights of your website. Having said that, take the extra effort to use CSS to create a customized slider style that will complement your existing website design.
Make sure that your sliders are mobile-friendly
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for years, you probably know that more and more people are into mobile browsing. As a website designer or owner, you have to make sure that your sliders will not ruin the whole design package of your page. In other words, your sliders should follow the responsive design, so that it appears amazing on any type of device.
Put in mind that your sliders serve as a website highlight, and so you have to be careful in the way your sliders are displayed on the screen.
For a gallery of photos, use thumbnails for your sliders
Slideshows of photos can be difficult to deal with especially if there are a lot of images included. Imagine posting a lot of photos on the slider, but your visitors cannot keep up with the continuous movement. There’s a big chance that viewers will have a hard time going back to images that have already been displayed.
Failing to present your images properly defeats the purpose of your sliders. For this to be resolved, it is best to use thumbnails to make it easier for your website visitors to navigate to previous and next photos.
Use Lightbox to display photos from your slideshow
To maximize the use of sliders, it is highly recommended that you use Lightbox to let your website visitors view the photos more closely. This way, you can allow them to explore the slider contents in closer detail.
THE BEST TIMES TO USE A SLIDER
- Introducing Your Website
- Updating Content Dynamically
- Consolidating Different Types of Media
- Highlighting Multiple Images in Videos or Galleries
- Telling a Story
- Following Sequential Steps
- Improve Site Functionality
- increase your conversion rates
- Improve User Experience
But some experts do not agree to used and apply the SLIDER to developing websites. So they have a lot of reasons to prove their idea.
Disadvantages using the slider in website
Eight proofs Why Image Sliders Are not the appropriate way to use them in websites:
1. The Cause Banner Blindness
Yes, banner blindness is a real thing. When the images of your slider look too much like a banner or advertisement: Your visitors ignore them and move on.
No matter how much you brand your images, if they look like ads, there’s a high possibility they will be ignored.
2. They Divide Your User’s Attention
Images on sliders represent different products or offers in the span of a few seconds. Your user has hardly read ONE thing when whoosh the image changes and they have to refocus their attention.
3. The Human Eye Doesn’t Respond Well to Movement
We may not live in the jungle anymore, but we did once. Our brains are wired to react to sudden movement, and this movement is called a saccade. It’s our retina’s uncontrollable response to movement, and the speed of movement during each saccade can’t be controlled. The eyes move as fast as they are able.
The movement might have been prey in prehistoric times, but today, it’s your slider.
Say goodbye to your prospect because your visitors will be too distracted by the image sliders to notice anything else.
4. Sliders are bad for user experience (They Take Away Control from Your Visitors)
Visitors like to be in control when they arrive on your website. They don’t want to see something they have no use for, and frankly, the whole point of your website should be to give your visitor what they came for.
We have tested rotating offers many times and have found it to be a poor way of presenting home page content.
Rotating banners are absolutely evil and should be removed immediately.
When you put an auto-rotating image slider on your homepage, you take control out of your user’s hands and give it to the slider. Do you know what follows? Disaster. Image sliders keep rotating, which is not only frustrating but is terrible for usability according to the folks at UX Movement.
Pretty is important on the web. Almost 40% of online users will leave an unattractive site. And two-thirds will choose a well-designed page of content over plainer versions. But pretty doesn’t always equate with effective. Sliders have been shown to trigger what’s called banner blindness.
5. Sliders are bad for conversions (They Take Up Space… And Hardly Get Clicked)
You already know image sliders are so fast and distracting, visitors tend to ignore them. However, when some of the specialists ran a study at Notre Dame University pages to test and measure the number of clicks made on the sliders in comparison to homepage visits.
The study revealed a mere 1% of visitors clicked on a feature on the slider. That’s like the unicorn of bad conversions.
https://erikrunyon.com/2013/01/carousel-interaction-stats/
6. They Reduce Visibility
Some of the specialist groups ran a usability study, where a user was attempting to search special deals on special and famous products. The user arrived on their website that used Slider option so the visitors should be confused to choose one of them.
7. Sliders Are Bad for SEO
Image sliders are used to attract and engage visitors on websites.
But before choosing an image slider plugin, there are a few points that you should know about sliders and SEO. That way, you’ll know which sliders to avoid so your rankings aren’t affected.
8. Sliders are bad for marketing
At first blush, it might seem that sliders would be great for helping to achieve marketing goals. For example, you could create individual slides or panels for the slider on your homepage, one for each separate user profile. That way, you could reach each segment of your prospective market with one page, and direct each group to the information that they’d find most valuable.
“This popular design element is – for many – the go-to solution when there are more messages to put on the home page than there is room to put them. Rather than make the tough decisions that require prioritizing conversion goals, web teams turn to the rotating banner as an offer of compromise.
Sliders are absolutely evil and should be removed immediately.”
using the slider in website: Tim Ash, CEO at SiteTuners, Author of Landing Page Optimization (also available on Kindle)
conclusion
It is a great challenge (using the slider) for website’s developer because they are in the battle between a lot of cases like performance, speed, visit’s traffic, etc. so what do them think about sliders? Are sliders out or still useful on the new generation of websites? Are they actively making use of sliders and carousels on their website and would they still consider using sliders yet?
