Carousels, often called sliders, are a common feature on a lot of websites.
They are easily recognisable, often at the top of a homepage, a rotating slideshow of images and messages highlighting the latest news, campaigns, products or deals.
On the surface, carousels may seem like a great idea, a way to convey multiple messages on the homepage without using up too much screen real estate.
In reality, though, carousels are an extremely poor component to have on your website.
They're not used
While it may seem like a good idea to use a carousel, the numbers simply don’t back it up. The click-through rate (which simply put means the number of people who clicked on an image or an ad in the carousel and went on to see more information) on carousels is abysmally low, with the majority of clicks happening on the first slide.
Research has shown that just 1 per cent of site visitors click on carousels with 84 per cent of those clicks on the first slide. This means that all the remaining slides combined receive a paltry 16 per cent of the 1per per cent of visitors who engaged with the carousel.
Research has also shown us that users are bombarded with advertisements front and centre on homepages so often that they start to ignore them and look beyond the ads to find the information they are seeking, a phenomenon known as banner blindness.
More issues
Carousels also have other drawbacks, they remove control from the user, and provide poor readability and user experience, especially on mobile which negatively impacts the performance and speed of your site, which in turn can affect your SEO rankings.
Crucially, most carousels are not optimised for accessibility meaning they are often inaccessible to users with disabilities.
If carousels have such poor engagement, user experience and are often ignored, then why are they so popular? There are several contributing reasons to this.
They are often thought to be stylish, unfortunately without much substance behind them.
There is undoubtedly a copycat effect where designers hopped on the carousel bandwagon without ever researching their effectiveness.
Crucially, they often meet the needs of the organisation and not the user. They help to avoid any infighting and tough discussions about what content really should be featured on a home page, providing an easy solution for telling competing departments within an organisation that their messaging is on the website.
Alternatives
The best alternative to a carousel is to engage in these tough discussions, research your user’s needs and feature your most important products or content in that space instead. It will lead to better conversions and happier users.
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