Sliders, carousels, rotating banners, there are many names by which this “fantastic” tool is known to help us show a lot of content in a small space…or, well, that’s what we have been led to believe.

Although it may be hard to believe, sliders do little to nothing when it comes to achieving your website's ultimate goal, i.e., they don't generate conversions. They may be very pretty, but they negatively affect your entire website, and on this occasion we want to give you the arguments as to why sliders are killing your website.

Some findings about sliders

According to studies carried out by shouldiusecarousel.com and quoted by Yoas SEO, one of the world's leading SEO experts and creators of the Yoas SEO plugin, the sliders:

• It only has a usage rate of 1% by users, who usually only click on the first image.
• They confuse people because you are sending multiple messages, causing the user to not be able to focus.
• They cause visual blindness, meaning they usually ignore these sections, causing your message to get lost and not reach its destination.
• They slow down your website, which has a very, very negative impact on your SEO ranking.
• They do not work, in most cases, on mobile devices.
• They push your content down, preventing your main message from being “Above the Bold” or the first screen that people see when they enter your website.

As you can see, all these findings are bad news for your website, but you can even test it yourself: create a page with a slider and another with a static image and see which one generates more conversions. Most of the time, the page with the static image will win.

Should I use a slider on my website?

When you are in the stage of creating your website, you must think about an attractive and functional site, design and content must go hand in hand to convey a message and ensure that people who visit your website find what they are looking for.

There are many creative ways to display your message and all of them can be done without sliders. It may sound complicated, but remember, you need to think about what your customers need.

Below, we will explain in more depth the reasons why you should NOT include sliders on your website.

Sliders slow down your website

One of the key factors that Google takes into account when it comes to position your website is its loading time. Believe it or not, the maximum time a website should take to load is 3 seconds.

To achieve this time, you must optimize the code, reduce the use of JavaScript and not fill the website with heavy images and videos.

The problem is that sliders carry a lot of weight on your website, and if it is a custom slider, with lots of effects and images of considered sizes (and therefore of considerable weight) they considerably increase the loading time.

Another disadvantage is that the code for the sliders installed in WordPress is loaded on all pages, even those that don't use it, so just by using one on the home page, you are already greatly affecting your entire website.

Terrible conversion rate

As we explained above, only 11% of people who enter a website with a slider click on it, and if they do, they usually do so on the first slide, the others…well, they are forgotten.

On the other hand, most sliders are sized large enough to fill the entire screen, which pushes all your content down, causing important content to not be displayed “Above the Fold” or in the first screenshot.

Loss of the main message

Studies confirm that a user gets an impression of a website and decides whether to stay or not within 10 seconds, so when designing a website, the first screen should convey the main message why people should trust you, your products and your services.

What happens with sliders is that in that first screen you are sending a series of different messages to your user, which appear at a certain time. You are simply wasting valuable time by making your potential clients see a series of images.

They may see something interesting inside the slider, but if they can't find a way to get back to that slide, trust us, they won't wait for it to appear again, and they'll quickly leave your website.

The worst enemy of mobile devices

Sliders are poorly optimized for websites and are the worst enemies of responsive websites.

The main problem is that most sliders when displayed on mobile devices, directly load the images from the desktop version, which are not optimized for mobile speed, ruining the experience on phones with 3G technology or lower.

Plus, extra work is required if you want to make a responsive slider that is functional and adapts to different screen sizes; the slightest mistake and the entire responsiveness of your website will be ruined.

Some expert testimonies

Below, we want to show you some expert SEO testimonials about sliders.

Sliders only exist because web designers love them. And because they make the web team's life easier: they can give each department or division a space on the homepage. And they don't have to make choices. But, it's not your job to make your coworkers happy. Your job is to make visitors happy. And to sell. And that, is the biggest problem with sliders: they don't convert. They never did and they never will.

Sliders suck 99.8% of the time! We did a test with a client where we changed their slider to static images with 3 key benefits, and conversions increased significantly.

We rarely use sliders. A slider is an 'involuntary auto-scrolling arrow'. It's as if the website takes the user's mouse and starts scrolling it all over the page without the user's permission.

And we, as designers, lose control over what the user sees. If the user swipes to the bottom of the page, they may miss some slider panels altogether.

In conclusion

And after all this tour of testimonies and arguments, the fact is that sliders only bring problems to the website, they affect loading times, they don't work well on mobile devices and, to top it all off, they are strongly ignored by users.

Remember that the primary objective of a website is to engage a user and guide them until they acquire your product or service. To do this, it is best to show an impressive image with an engaging message and you will have a much greater chance of generating conversion.