Turns out, I was wrong about sliders

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article titled 8 best grid websites, and followed it up with Nice WordPress themes for a grid a few days later.

While I still love the FrancoGrid website and think it looks great, it turns out I was very, very wrong about one thing.

That slider at the top of many websites? Turns out, it doesn’t work.

A slider — also known as a slideshow, or photo carousel — is a way to rotate different pictures or other types of content automatically. You can showcase multiple destinations, events, or special offers in one place.

The FrancoGrid website. The images are gorgeous, but nobody can see them if they move automatically.

Except for one thing.

They don’t work.

According to this article on the ConversionXL blog, sliders don’t work, they never work, and they waste a bunch of space on your website that could have been spent doing something actually useful.

The article — very much well worth reading — quotes a whole bunch of usability experts and tests. It turns out that people completely ignore sliders. Anything that moves on a website is automatically ignored. Visitors just scroll down to find the meat. Nobody reads the slides. Nobody clicks on them. The only people who benefit from them are the ones who designed the website and can point to it and say, “Oooh, look how pretty that is.”

So, my new recommendation is: instead of automatically rotating slideshows, use manually-activated sliders to showcase images of your grid. If people have to click the right arrow to see the next slide, they’ll actually pay attention to what’s on it. Another option is to show a grid of scaled-down thumbnails that visitors can click on to see the entire image.

Or, better yet, use the space for your top call-to-action.

I’m in the process of rethinking the design of Hypergrid Business, and I will definitely be keeping this information in mind. And will need to start my search for templates over again from scratch — all my favorites have automatic sliders on them!

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Maria Korolov

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.