To slide or not to slide…that is the question.  If you go back several years, website sliders were all the rage for adding “pazzaz” to your website and making it look cool for your customers.  Indeed, sliders have progressed to bring some visually stunning effects that let you do some pretty neat stuff with images and text.  But, there’s a problem… according to Yoast, only 1% of visitors will click on your first slide, and virtually zero clicks for subsequent slides.

While conversions (clicks) are a very important reason to consider not using a slider, there are other very good reasons you should consider before using or to continue using a slider.

Conversions

Sliders are very common among websites today, as over 1/3 of them use a slider or moving image carousel.  Unless there is a very compelling reason to use a slider, they tend to be distracting for users and perhaps even frustrating.  Some sites may have slow moving slides and some fast.  If it’s fast, it’s likely that users will get frustrated trying to read them as they flash by, and that’s IF they haven’t already moved down or away from your site.  If the slides are moving too slow, virtually NO ONE is going to wait around for the next slide to appear.  In either case, having a slider is an expensive use of space.

Most websites are created to convert a sale or create a lead, so you want your sales copy and call-to-action (CTA) to be as high up as possible.  Therefore, a slider is likely not the best use of the space on your website and may actually lead to less conversions.

Website Performance

I recently removed the slider from my own website, mainly because it was slowing down my website.  This is because most sliders are using Javascript to accomplish all the cool special affects, which means loading a lot of code up front BEFORE the visitor to your website ever sees anything on your page.  This condition is called “render blocking.”

Your home page is almost always the #1 landing page on your website, so if you’re using a slider only on your home page, it’s absolutely going to slow performance.

Mobile Performance

Mobile users are notoriously impatient, so if you’re website performance is slowed down by a slider, you are likely losing visitors (called bounces).  It’s a well established metric that 32% of mobile users will leave your website if it takes more than 2.5 seconds to load.  And that number of visitors leaving only increases with longer wait times.  So, if you still really want a slider on your website, try turning it off for mobile devices.

With over 60% of searches performed on mobile devices, do you really want to slow them down?

The bottom line is sliders are not good for performance or as a conversion tool, so my recommendation is to not use them if at all possible.