The homepage slider. They’re sometimes called “carousels” or “slide shows“. They once ruled the web because people were captivated by something moving on the page. Over time though, and especially in recent years, they’ve become a disappointing user experience. 

Here are 5 reasons why you end the relationship with your huge homepage slider.

1. Sliders Contribute to Lost Traffic: Sliders slow download times because they often use multiple large images, which quickly eat up bandwidth.

Websites lose traffic when it takes a significant amount of time to load content. That few milliseconds of slowness in loading several large images have been proven to contribute to a higher bounce rate. “Bounce rate” is the percentage of visitors that leave a webpage without taking any action, such as clicking on a link, filling out a form, or making a purchase.

2. Sliders can become invisible to your visitors. Banner blindness is when people subconsciously ignore content that resembles an advertisement.

When users visit a website, they have a particular objective in mind (like reading more about a news story they heard on the radio or registering for a contest) and anything resembling an advertisement gets passed over – both visually and perceptually.

3. Sliders have horrible click rates: Visitors simply do not get clicked. This means they are not effective in moving visitors around your website and getting visitors to do what you want them to.  A study by

4. Sliders can harm your SEO efforts: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing website traffic and exposure to your brand through proper search engine results. Contributing factors include:

- Slow site speeds because of multiple large image downloads. Slow-loading websites get pushed down in search results while faster loading sites get preference.

- Sometimes the headings in the slides are H1 (heading) tags. This creates problems for search engine rankings because the content isn’t following the correct hierarchy for HTML.

- Some older sliders could possibly be flash-based and therefore impossible for search engines and some modern browsers (mainly mobile) to read.

5. Sliders can overwhelm visitors and turn away certain audiences: Some sliders move so quickly that people can’t read the full message and take any action on the information.  Sliders are not accessible to all audiences. Not only do people with vision impairments miss slider navigation but some sliders can malfunction within specific browsers that disabled persons use to navigate the web.

So, what are some slider alternatives? 

Instead of showcasing multiple messages in a slider, narrow down the single most important one, or display several smaller static messages stacked in columns or rows. Small images load faster, and you still get the multiple messages across that you’re wanting to. Just don’t fill the page with every option you can think of (overwhelming).

We’ve seen some radio stations use video. Just be sure they are short and focused with one clear message.

We continue to see sliders filled with large static images of every daypart show. Folks, studies have clearly shown that sliders are doing the opposite of what you intend them for. You think they are promoting your shows. They’re not. They are simply distracting users from valuable content they come to the website for.

There are so many reasons to get rid of sliders. I hope this podcast helps you start a journey to a slider-less website.