Good and Bad Slider Practices: A Detailed Guide

In the business world, first impressions are important. That’s why it’s crucial to have a well-designed website that makes a good impression on potential customers. Part of having a well-designed website is having an effective slider.

A slider is an image carousel that you can use to display multiple images or videos on a website. They are a popular way to showcase products or services on a homepage and can be a powerful tool for increasing conversion rates.

While sliders can be effective, there is such a thing as bad slider design. In this blog post, we will cover good and bad slider practices so that you can avoid making common mistakes in your slider design.

What are Sliders?

Sliders are a popular way to showcase content on websites. You can use them to display products or photos, and web designers can incorporate them into all sites. Sliders are handy for businesses that want to show relevant content or showcase professional portfolios. A slider can be a beneficial tool to show multiple options and help users sort through them quickly.

Why are Sliders Important for Your Website?

There are various reasons why you can use sliders on your website. Here we’ve gathered some of them.

1. Flexibility

With sliders, you have the option to convey messages to users using multiple things like attractive images, videos, texts, and buttons within a single slider. This is how you can perfectly explain anything related to your business within a single slider.

2. SEO 

Pick a slider plugin that follows best SEO practices can mean the difference between success and failure regarding your website’s visibility. Make sure to choose one with coded optimization in mind to enjoy the benefits of increased traffic and better rankings.

3. Space savers

Sliders are a good way to display a handful amount of information within a very concise space. It’s because a slide extends the related content only when it appears on the screen. All you can do is just squeeze the information within a specific area and users can extend that specific content based on their demand.

4. Visually attractive 

One of the key reasons to use sliders is that they are a visually attractive medium to catch users’ attraction. Based on your choice, you can display sliders anywhere on your website. Users can quickly get an overview of what you want to display, and thus it inspires them to engage with that particular content displayed on the slider.

5. Automation

Sliders are equipped with automated functionality to display content. That’s why, without any manual touch, your selected content will be automatically displayed to the users. Besides, sliders come with multiple functionalities like arrows, dots and buttons by which a user can easily control the slider by scrolling forward and backwards. That’s how your user gets a good visual experience. 

Good and Bad Slider Practices for Your Website

There are good and bad slider practices that you can use on your website to improve user experience. Considering this fact, in the following parts, we’ll be showcasing a detailed discussion on both dos and don’ts of using the slider to help you take a thorough idea of using sliders. Let’s scroll down.

Good Practices for A Superb Sliding Experience

In order to make the slide displaying process more dynamic and effective for users, here are some good practices you should follow.

1. Have clear purpose

Your sliders should have a clear purpose on your website. It should differ from those of your competitors, who may be using carousel sliders to display a large volume of information without taking up much website space. Alternatively, displaying testimonial sliders can help earn trust from your visitors about the products or services you offer.

2. Provide easy navigation

Adding an easy navigation system to your slider will make it easier for users to navigate and use. Two common systems are used for slider navigation: left/right arrows and dots. The left/right arrow system is straightforward, with icons on the left side of the slider that corresponds to the direction arrows on the right side, making it easy for visitors to move around. 

The dot-based navigation system uses circles that light up when you hover over them, making it clear which slide is currently visible. This makes slider navigation a breeze for anyone using your website.

3. Responsive design

Make sure your website is responsive to look great on all devices, including mobiles and laptops. The number of people visiting websites via mobile phones is increasing rapidly, so ensure your content is adaptable to all screen sizes. Sometimes you may need to modify some content to fit perfectly on all devices.

4. Ditch autoplay 

One of the key reasons for displaying the slider is to attract and notify visitors. If your sliders are in autoplay mode, it won’t be easy to absorb your website’s content. As a result, visitors will need clarification, and it may track them out from the buying intention. 

Another reason for stopping the autoplay option in the slider is that it may remind them of advertisements. Visitors will ignore your slider if this is the case, thinking of it as a typical advertisement. So, let your user have full control over the speed of the sliders’ carousel, which will offer them a very comfortable user experience.

Autoplay also negatively impacts your website’s performance by taking more time to load a webpage.

5. Optimize for SEO

Sliders are a great way to show off your photos and graphic designs, but remember that you need to ensure they’re both user-friendly and rank well on popular search engines. Optimizing your headers, image, and text can create a slider that users will love and help your website rank higher in popular search engines.

6. Make sure the slider fits into your website

To ensure your slider grabs the visitor’s attention, use an attractive design that matches the colors of your website. For example, if white and red are your website’s primary colors, use these colors in your slider as well. Avoid creating a slider that uses completely different colors, such as blue and yellow and it will look like you’re trying to sell them something, and they’ll likely avoid it.

Additionally, using too many complex jarring contrasts in a slider can cause it to feel intrusive or like an advertisement – this could lead visitors to skip the slider altogether and remove it from their minds entirely.

7. Use Lightbox Popup to display images

With sliders, you can feature beautiful content like photos and portfolios without having to worry about space or resolutions. Simply set up the content, and the slider will open in a lightbox popup when clicked. This makes it easy to show off your work in full glory on multiple screens without having to sacrifice any quality.

Bad Practices Regarding Slider Display

Here, we will show some commonly used bad practices about displaying sliders.

1. Use text on images 

When it comes to displaying text in images, there are a couple of problems. One is that images are generally scaled down so that they fit on smaller screens, making the text hard to read. Additionally, since the text is not accessible to screen readers, those who use them may not be able to see it.

However, if you use layers instead, the text will behave like any other content on your site and anyone using assistive technologies should be able to read it easily. Plus, the text will show up on Google searches just as well.

2. Use inappropriate images

Using images on your website is an important part of creating a professional look. One common mistake is using an image different from the correct size. For example, if you want to use a portrait image in a landscape image’s place. Another area for improvement is setting the focus correctly. The focus point of an image should always be visible so that the most important part of the picture stays on the screen.

When choosing stock images, ensure they are appropriate for your business and fit your overall design. Additionally, ensure that the watermark doesn’t interfere with user experience and don’t use heavily watermarked images as this will quickly turn off Visitors.

3. Forcing the desktop look for mobile

Layout optimization is key for a good user experience on any device. That’s why it’s important to keep the layout flexible to work well on different screen sizes. For example, one common layout on desktop computers is two columns of text with buttons next to them.

But this design looks great when viewed on a phone if it occupies less space. A more optimized mobile layout looks much better and allows columns to break below one another instead of cramming everything into one column.

4. Autoplay without control

Creating an autoplaying slider is easier than it seems. You need to do is to give the visitor control over when and how the slideshow plays. You can place a button to pause or resume the slideshow and let them control when it resumes after they leave it. Additionally, you should ensure that the Autoplaying slider does not interfere with their interaction with the page.

5. Invisible navigation

Add arrows or bullets to the slides to make your slider easy to use and navigate. Choose a color palette offers high contrast with the background of the slider. If you are using dark images, choose light colors for the arrowheads. This will help make your slider more visible and enjoyable for your viewers.

Wrapping Up

That’s all! Like other proven strategies to display the product or service more interestingly on any website, sliders are one of them. If you want to make your website sliding experience more stunning and eye-catching than ever, it’s important to have ideas on good and bad slider practices to attract more visitors to your website’s content.

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