Should You Be Using Sliders in Clients Websites? | EP 493

The Best Way To Deal With Unhappy Clients

1. People don’t go beyond slide one to slide two, three or four. 01:26
2. Visitors often view sliders the same way they do ads and skip over them. 01:40
3. They push down your content, which is not smart.01:55
4. It’s most probably as effective to use just one image instead of putting all that effort in slider plugins and images. 02:30
5. Gallery with an image slide may be okay. But in general, no, don’t use sliders. 03:45

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:21 David Blackmon: Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of WP the podcast. Brought to you by WP Gears. I’m David Blackmon.

00:36 Tim Strifler: And I’m Tom Strifler.

00:37 David Blackmon: Today we’re going to discuss whether or not you should be using sliders in clients’ websites. And I’m not only talking about sliders in the hero section of a website where, you’ve come to the website and there’s just gigantic slider and it has lots of beautiful images that you can scroll through. But I’m also talking about sliders throughout the website. Sometimes you’ll scroll down a homepage and there’ll be a section there where people will have testimonials for example, scrolling in a slider. Should you use sliders period. And I hate to say this, I’m going to be the Debbie downer of the podcast episode. All of the data, I’m a data driven guy. I want to know what the metrics are.

01:26 David Blackmon: Do people actually click through are they going to the second, the third, the fourth slide? Is it effective? And as awesome as they look. And I’m going to tell you, I absolutely love giant sliders in the hero sections of website. The reality is, is that they really don’t work. People don’t go beyond slide one to slide two, three or four. You’re better off if you have an important message that you want to get to a client, is having your most important message there above the fold and then incorporating it into the page as they scroll down the page. Because a lot of people are conditioned to find out more about your company, your services by scrolling down as opposed to scrolling left or right. Now, Tim you have some different information and Tim says it depends. So I want to hear what he has to say.

02:20 Tim Strifler: Well, we are definitely on the same page when it comes to marketing messaging and hero sliders. You want the focus to be on one thing and it’s not just our opinion. That’s what the data shows. This has been heavily tested and there’s data out there that you can look up on, on sliders that people don’t click up or just as David mentioned. And so you want to guide them through the messaging of your website and have the focus on one thing at a time not hidden behind the next slide. However, if you’re talking about a image slider for example that’s lower on the page and it’s showing something specific and it’s just basically a design tool to not have to show a ton of images on top of each other. Then I think those are okay because the point isn’t about marketing messaging and guiding them through the focus of the site or the features or anything like that. It’s being used for a specific purpose.

03:23 Tim Strifler: I think those are okay. I think where the data shows that they’re ineffective is when you’re, like we talked about in the hero section, talking about the features or the benefits of your company or product. Those are totally ineffective and can actually hurt conversion rates because it’s just kind of too much information and people don’t look at it and all that.

03:45 Tim Strifler: But I think in specific situations for a specific purpose maybe on a, kind of a drill down page where it’s talking about something specific and showing off, almost in place of a gallery. I think the gallery having an image slide, I think those are okay. But in general, no, don’t use sliders.

04:05 David Blackmon: All right, well there you go, Tim and I’s opinion and some of it backed up with actual factual information and data that you can take to the bank all right. Tomorrow we’ve got another great episode on WP the podcast. If you are a new listener to this podcast and you haven’t made a decision on whether or not you’ll want to subscribe, I’m going to highly encourage you to go ahead and subscribe. If you’ve been listening to it for a while or a couple of episodes and you really like what you’re hearing and you’re loving it, leave us a review. That’s how people find us on iTunes. You come up and search is a whole lot better. That’s their algorithm, their algorithm for podcast is podcast reviews. They figure if people are raving about how awesome the podcast is then it must be great and we need to show it higher versus all other WordPress podcast. We would really appreciate it if you left us a review.

05:01 David Blackmon: And hey, if you don’t like us and we’re doing something that you feel like we could do better, we take constructive criticism and feedback back as well. Head on over to wpgears.com, leave us a comment. We’d love to hear from you regardless. Tim, until tomorrow, we’ll see you then.

05:22 Tim Strifler: Take care. Bye Bye.