Carousels / Sliders / Slideshows, whatever you want to call them...just don't (please)

We don't have a carousel on the Miami homepage and there's good reason. Here's a brief rundown of why

Banner Blindness is basically when users subconsciously learn to ignore anything that resembles an ad

A user is on your site to achieve something they've already got in their head, so they tend to ignore all the extra stuff (especially ads!), and carousels / sliding banners /  mimic the look and feel of ads meaning they tend to get ignored

Carousels are generally either when companies want to show multiple messages, or when there's multiple different areas inside a business that all want a piece of the cake on the homepage. Problem is, its overwhelming

Just imagine a scenario where you're walking into a retail shop. You get through the door and a member of staff greets you

"Oh hello! Did you know we have a sale on men's pants today; they're 2 for 1!"

Just as they finish their sentence, another member of staff comes over and says

"Hi, we have a new collection of homeware on the second floor, come and..."

Another member of staff...

"By the way we have just opened a cafe on the third floor so when you're done shopping, why not come and grab a coffee"

Another member of staff...

"Did you know we're open this bank holiday weekend?"

Another member of staff...

"You definitely need to come and have a look at our new sportswear!"

And all of this happens in a matter of seconds. I don't know about you, but I'd be the first to say "thanks, but I'll make my own way around"

It's just all too much, and this is exactly what carousels are trying to do

Again, there's a lot of stats online about the CTR of carousels and they're all pretty shocking

I did some recent research and testing on a site that used a carousel, and the results were no different. The images / banners in the carousel were nice. They had all the best practices implemented like call to actions on there; clear messaging; not too much information etc, but they didn't perform

The highest CTR on this particular site on the carousel was 0.7%

Pretty shocking if you ask me

Carousels can be difficult for users at the best of times.

It's difficult for users that read at a slower rate to get all the information on the carousel (nevermind remember it)

The movement of carousels can be very distracting for users, and the use of arrows / dots and where they are positioned

This is all not to mention users that may be visually impaired that could be using screen readers!

Get them out of sight

Carousels / sliders etc CAN be useful, if they're used in the right way, in the right place. For example, if you want to save some real estate on mobile devices when showing related products or upsells, you might want to put those into a carousel / slider. Just make sure it doesn't automatically rotate as this takes control away from the user which is never a good idea

Make good choices

So you've removed your carousel from your homepage and now you want to add 65 other messages around your site. Prioritise. Put them into a list; decide on 1 or 2 messages that are absolutely key to having on the frontend. Don't overwhelm your users

Be clever

Think about adding much thinner banners to your pages if you really want to push a particular product or something helpful to users. Like in this example on Miami

Unfortunately, carousels don't work. I'm sure there'll be something online or someone with some data that shows otherwise, and if that's the case, great. But generally speaking, they always perform the same; rubbish!

This is after years of testing and data gathering with the same results, then trying to convince customers to remove them

Most importantly, do some testing yourself. Gather some data on your CTR on carousels and you'll be able to make easy decisions

We're here to help, so feel free to get in touch if you have any questions!