When building websites for clients, one thing that happens very often is companies wanting to add sliders (or carrousels) to it. You know them, those huge images that are changing every few seconds. Normally you’ll find them on the home page.
I always discourage that. Sliders aren’t a good idea in my opinion. They are not usable, make your website slow and they make you add less focus. Let me explain why.
User unfriendly
Carrousels are not user friendly. The visitor wants to have control while surfing on your website. Moving elements are disastrous. They increase the chance that the visitor will leave again.
A website with static info performs better. Investigations confirm this. For example this one from Jakob Nielsen.
No patience
A visitor is always in a hurry. No patience present. So when you cram five images into a slider, expect only the first one will be seen. It’s a matter of seconds until the visitor will be on the next page.
Or on another website. He doesn’t want to waste too much time finding the information he was looking for.
Furthermore, the page speed decreases when there are more images to be loaded. This also influences the bounce rate and your position in Google.
Focus
A slider apparently gives you the luxury of not having to make a choice about what’s the main goal of your website. This encourages you to not have focus.
What do you want the visitor to do on your website? If you are not able to choose, the visitor will not be at all (quote). So you are creating confusion. And that will make people abandon.
Still not convinced? Take a look at this website and you will be.