Homepage Sliders: Do They Actually Work?

I'm sure you've seen them.

Homepage sliders have been all over the web for years now. But do they work?

In other words, do they help your site convince and convert more visitors into leads or buyers?

Well, some interesting research recently shows that sliders on the homepage are actually a distraction to website visitors.

Let me explain...

What's a Homepage Slider?

Homepage sliders — or carousels — are a series of images that rotate or change at the top of your homepage.

[caption id="attachment_5698" align="aligncenter" width="692"] Via ConversionSciences.com[/caption]

While they're slowly becoming a website trend of the past, I still see several sites out there that use sliders to cram as many offers or information onto the homepage as possible.

Because more is always better, right?

Not exactly...

Why Homepage Sliders Don't Work

When we use random motion on our site, we are forcing visitors through a paralysis analysis process and they leave without understanding our product or following our information flow path.

So instead of the eye following a natural progression through the page, the slider motion becomes a distraction to your visitors, forcing their eyes them to jump back up to the top of the page and re-engage with the content where they left off.

Make sense?

Below are three helpful articles that dive deeper into the science of why sliders don't work: