A nice big rotator on the home page of your website is a crucial part of the design, right? Well, maybe, no. Although they sure are enticing, rotators may harm you more than they help. Let’s take a closer look.
Rotators are great because…
- You can use them to show off several large images (visually pleasing, and an effective way to tell people in Marketing/Senior Management that their latest idea is now on the Home Page)
- They allow you to have multiple calls to action, which means more opportunities for users to convert
- They introduce animation, making the site seem more alive
- Everyone else has one (it’s a standard design practise, right?)
Rotators aren’t so great because…
I don’t want to bog you down with negativity, so here are three key points to consider when you’re adding rotators to your site. I’ve picked these points because they are the grain of salt that needs to be added to the above pros.
Maybe they outweigh the pros, maybe they don’t; either way, arm yourself with the information so you can make smart design decisions.
- You’re increasing the load time of your home page by adding a rotator: the larger the image, the heavier the page. Though many sites will optimise the load time of these images, you’re still adding to overall page weight.
- According to the crew at Maxiomtech, there is roughly a 85% drop off in click through rates between the first slide and the second; a rate which continues for each additional slide added to your rotator… That means your multiple calls to action are relatively impotent, and one might even say that you’re hiding them by putting them in a rotator
- The average person’s attention span on a webpage is about 10 seconds, which means you’re going to have to display each slide for a very short time before moving to the next if you want them all seen within this time limit. So, how fast can your customers read?
Lest you’re worried that the above is just my personal opinion, rest assured that numerous studies and tests have revealed that sliders will, more often than not, harm your site. Joyce Grace at ManageWP went so far as to say “we should be embarrassed for using them when they were hot, like our 80s hairstyles”. If you do want to do some more reading, take a look at the articles here and here for a few more voices on the subject.