What do an expensive website and a 5-minute WordPress installation have in common?
If you said “some really bad things that should be flogged and eradicated immediately” you’d get a big grand prize.
Paying a lot of money or spending a lot of time and energy building your site doesn’t always mean it’s stellar. And sometimes the things that can make it un-stellar are small and even common.
In fact, I bet you see these things on sites every day. I bet you see them on most sites.
In fact… true confession… this site had some of these things in the not-too-distant past.
And then we flogged them and eradicated them with prejudice. Here are some of those things and why they need to go.
Ads. All Of Them.
You’re complaining. And disagreeing. I can hear you from here!
But I want you to think about what ads do to your experience on a site.
There are banners that abuse our eyes from headers, often flashing or scrolling or doing some sort of dance for our attention, distracting us from the real content.
There are sidebar ads that get mashed up with links, offers and other content.
There are those infuriatingly deceptive inline ads that look like links but pop up some aggravating little selly-sell-sell box as you attempt to read and explore the content on a page.
Sometimes there are even big graphic ads right in the middle of a page, so you’ll be reading along, reading along and then…
HELLO I AM AN AD!
And you keep reading and…
What the hell was that? Now you’re distracted and trying to figure out what you just read and how it all fits together.
Ah, I hear your justifications, too.
“Eh, but I’ve learned to tune ads out. I just ignore them and read the content.”
To that all I have to say is… exactly.
Ads have one of two effects on your site visitors. They will either (1) Be intrusive or (2) Be ignored completely.
Neither one makes them useful for you, helpful for winning fans or useful for making real sales or getting real leads.
Unless selling ad space is your revenue model then eradicate them immediately.
You have to be making a ship ton of money (that’s right, I said ship) to justify the way they interrupt and diminish your visitor’s experience on your site.
Yes, we ran ads here before. We tried Amazon affiliate ads. We tried Google AdSense ads. Yes, we made a few bucks. Thirteen here. Five there. Enough, at the end of a few months, to go out for a burger.
Big deal.
In the meantime, they looked crummy, took up valuable space that we could have been using to sell our own products or services, occasionally dragged the load time of our page down to crawl-speed and once in a while defied us with an inappropriate ad that we had to scurry to remove.
Managing the ads was more trouble than it was worth. Sometimes they were irrelevant. Sometimes they were oddball. Sometimes they advertised for competitors. The amount of tweaking to moderate those ads was not worth the burger.
So if ads are your sole source of revenue and that’s the way you want it to stay, or if you’re making money hand over fist and laughing all the way to your next Caribbean cruise, then ignore this advice.
Otherwise, eradicate.
Popups. Even The Really Pretty Ones.
Ah, popups, the bane of a website visitor’s existence and the darling of website owners everywhere.
More true confessions… we used a popup subscription box on this site, too. And guess what we got? Subscriptions!
For every person who complained about it, another signed up for our email list. Can’t argue with numbers, can you?
Well, it turned out we could… and so can you.
There’s a reason people complain about popups and that’s because they’re disruptive. And even though they may get you a few subscriptions, I strongly suggest taking the same approach to popups that you do to ads – unless they’re exponentially growing your email list then eradicate them.
Consider the fact that a person can only sign up for your list once. But they can see that popup every single time they visit your site. So you’ve just earned one email address in exchange for disrupting that person over and over and over forever. Is that what you really want to do to your visitors?
Here’s something else we found about growing our list: offering a valuable freebie, sans popup, added far more emails to our list in a single shot than that popup did in its lifetime.
If you’ve got a good offer you don’t need to shout it into someone’s face repeatedly. You can tie it up in a bow and hold it out meekly and people will grab it enthusiastically and then go on to enjoy your content and continue to revisit your site.
But your popup is like that gift that keeps on giving… and not in a good way. After someone has accepted your gift you continue to thrust it at them ignorantly:
TAKE MY GIFT! TAKE IT! TAKE IT NOW!
I find it especially peevy when I have to dismiss a popup by agreeing to some stupid, manipulative statement.
A popup I stumbled across on one particular site screams some offer about a groundbreaking report and if I don’t want it, if I am just too lame to accept such an amazing offer, I have to click the button that says, “No, I do NOT want my marketing to succeed.”
I have actually learned to avoid that site because it bugs me that much.
The solution? Eradicate.
Sliders. Period.
In redesigning this very site we were one day away from launching with a slider on the home page. A slider, if you’re not entirely clear on what that is, is just that rotating image that is so ubiquitous on home pages. You see one graphic, offer, or bit of introductory text and then it whooshes off and another appears in its place with another graphic, offer, or bit of introductory text.
And do you know what else whooshes off with that slide? Your visitor’s attention.
Sliders started out being very cool because they were a way for us to reuse the same bit of real estate on our websites for a bunch of content. We could get all the important stuff out there, up front, “above the fold” and add a bit of drama and flair to our sites, too.
Much like early humans must have been pretty impressed the first time someone made fire, we internet-humans were pretty impressed by the whooshing images.
But then sliders proliferated and as they became more common, they began to blend into the rest of the noise and become a bit of an albatross.
Now, people may ignore them just as much as they ignore ads. In fact, some studies on the impact of sliders have demonstrated that people’s brains interpret them as ads. If you read my section on ads above, you know that means your lovely slider may be either irritating or ignored.
Plus sliders divert your visitor’s attention and can actually decrease conversions – and lose you opportunities. No sooner do your visitors focus on your amazing offer than you whisk it off-screen to be replaced by a bit about your customer service. You’re essentially forcing an oooh-shiny moment on your site visitors and given how short attention spans already are, you want your best offer up front and then you want to be sure it catches – and keeps – your visitor’s attention.
Footers. Because.
Some sections of a website have become so ubiquitous that it’s essentially a given that your site will include them. Sliders are almost one of those things but some sites do avoid them.
Sidebars are another. It’s rare you see a full-width web page that doesn’t have a left sidebar or a right sidebar or both or maybe even multiple left and/or right sidebars. Those can have a bit more usefulness, but they can also be abused and used “just because”.
But the worst offender is the footer – that last-minute throwaway of a section, the one that sits in a big mashup of leftover or repetitious junk at the bottom of your otherwise perfectly wonderful page.
A footer can provide a website visitor with useful information. Extra links, easy-to-find contact info, maybe even an extra nudge to take action. But mostly we end up filling them with stuff just because there is a section to fill.
Long ago in prehistoric internet days, it was common to repeat navigation links in the footer because the navigation links in the header were often embedded in graphics or fancy menus that search engines could not read. So we repeated those links as text in the footer so search engines would be able to follow them and find our pages. I think that practice has bled through to modern times “just because”. These days there’s no good reason to repeat your entire navigation menu in the footer of your site unless you require people to scroll for about five miles and don’t want them to get lost looking for the next page.
Ask yourself whether your footer is serving a functional purpose or whether you’ve stuffed a bunch of links, ads or text down there because someone gave you a space to fill and you filled it. I bet you’ll be surprised by how much of it can simply be eradicated.
Anything That Does Stuff Without Permission.
When websites became “interactive” we all did a little happy dance. Our pages no longer had to sit there in boring gobs of black-and-white text. Things could move! And be clickable! And sing and do a jig and all manner of exciting things.
For a while we went a little nuts with animations and floaty graphics and scrolly things. And for a while it was cool.
But once the shine wore off we started to realize that all that junk was noise. Now especially, as about a billion trillion zillion websites compete for your visitor’s attention, all that stuff is just wallpaper.
Unless they’re playing Candy Crush, people don’t want to “interact” any more. They want to get to the point. They want to know who you are and what you can do for them, not be impressed by your animations.
They want to find the product or service they’re looking for, not wait for your intro to load (you know, the one they can eventually “skip to enter”).
It’s time to ditch the glitter and get to the point. Your Flash intro has to go. Wipe it out with the same rag you used on that slider.
Video is great but that autoplay one? Eradicate! Those are intrusive and distracting. Your visitors can push the play button if they want to watch, and if they don’t, forcing it upon them won’t win you any fans. Plus, consider people who visit your site from the office or local coffee shop and the moment they find your site it blares out some welcome message or song.
Speaking of songs, please for the love of websites everywhere, eradicate all music from yours. I had this conversation with someone as recently as a few months ago. She wanted music playing in the background so it would create a “peaceful emotional state”. I can tell you one thing with certainty: no matter whether you play Metallica or Yanni, nothing is peaceful at full volume in the dead quiet of an office space when it turns on unexpectedly.
If you’re worried about your visitor’s emotional state then keep your site quiet, clean, simple and direct. Tell people what they need to know. Guide them where they need to go. Give them a reason to trust you and to do business with you based on the quality of your content and your ability to understand their needs – one of which is for a website experience that doesn’t wake the neighbors.
If you’ve got extraneous elements on your site that distract your visitors, startle them, intrude upon them or otherwise interfere with their own goals… say it with me… eradicate!
As For The Rest Of The Story…
Anything on your site that’s there “just because” or that isn’t directly contributing to someone taking action that leads to sales should be duly flogged and eradicated immediately.
You might have something on your site right now that works perfectly for a billion other people… but not for you. The only way to know is to look hard at whether every element contributes to a good experience for your visitors and more sales for you.
In the meantime, you can start by getting rid of the things I’ve mentioned here and finding other – and better – ways to appeal to your visitors.
What do you think? Are you so attached to any of the things I’ve listed that you wouldn’t part with them no matter what? Are there other bits of a website that wreck things for you that we’d all do well to avoid? Let me know!
In a world of dynamic content I would disagree with your sliders theory. I wouldn’t recommend a new slide every 2 seconds but I believe it’s beneficial to have a site look dynamic when a visitor arrives and/or returns. Depending on what’s being sold, a 6 or even 8 second delay will not divert attention but may introduce something more appealing to the visitor. The typical WP style giant image has impact but that’s about all I get out of it.
If sliders work for you then by all means go for it. In many cases they have been shown to decrease conversions. The timing being fast or slow is a conundrum because too fast means too little time to focus and too slow means people don’t stick around to see the next one. That assumes a happy middle but when you’re dealing with diversity in people it’s almost impossible to gauge that.
I also think it’s a myth that sites need to be “dynamic”. They need to give people what they want and lead them where they need to go. If that’s using text, video, scrolling graphics or whatever, then that’s what should be done, but I don’t like to make the assumption that people need something dynamic out of the gate. There is an alternative to a static page if you’re concerned about repeat visitors seeing the same thing, which is to change your offer on refresh.
That also assumes you have multiple offers that you need to get in front of people. Most businesses I’ve worked with have a focus point that’s “the offer” so to speak. Think about successful services – Mailchimp, Buffer, Hubspot, Hootsuite – they’re quite static and focus their pages on the most important thing they want people to do. Sliders tend to be gimmicky and many times they are used because that’s what came preinstalled in some WordPress theme.
So ultimately my feeling on the matter is that if a slider works, use it. But don’t assume you need one because of buzzwords like “dynamic”.
You go girl!
Also, it’s important to understand that “2 seconds” or “4 seconds” is an estimate. A slider configured to change at X seconds will change at different rates on different browsers on different operating systems. 6 seconds for me might be 8 seconds for you.
Good point, which also makes it quite hard to gauge a happy middle.
Good post, Carol. I definitely hate the subscription pop-ups and the skip-to-enter flash intros. I’m sure I don’t have the world’s best web site, but I’m continually trying to streamline it and clean it up. Thanks for the tips on what not to do. 😉
I’ve never met a person who likes popups, and yet we so often use them because they work… but my feeling is that other things work, too, and people don’t hate them! So go with that 🙂
I like the idea of streamlining. It’s tempting to want to put everything out there front and center and it definitely takes some painful extraction to streamline things.
Thank you Carol. I read you all the time and really enjoy your insight and I always come away with with something new from you. I probably should have added that for certain businesses sliders are not appropriate but if my client is selling lines of furniture, a picture of a chair is not enough. I know that’s the extreme but I want to be sure you understand my thinking on the subject.
Stephen, One thing to consider in a case like that is track the landing pages the visitor arrives on and then display only items relevant to that individual. In a scenario like that, the slider is unnecessary because you are rendering furniture that is contextual to the visitor’s behavior.
Sure, like I said, if it works, it works! Highly visual product lines like furniture, or say, photography, lean more towards what I would call a “slide show” than the typical slider that gets filled with whatever someone can come up with to fill three slots. There’s no hard and fast rule, we just start with best practices, think through what will work best for a particular need and try it.
Ads…well, my initial plan was to include ads (but, be cautious about what sort of offers I accept). I am still thinking about this, sort of like my backup plan. What if my other methods don’t work out well? I would still need the money to fund the blog.
Popups…ah, I don’t know. I have hated these, but I have also loved these (I have definitely used them to subscribe).
I think it all comes down to the settings. Some people use Popups to show up during the first visit within 5 seconds..that can be annoying (although it may get a lot of results).
I prefer to delay the popups (let them check out a few pages first..before showing them the pop up). I don’t use any popups right; I don’t really have anything to show off as an incentive!
I might go with your suggestion for an email or video course..let’s see.
As for the footer….I do use the footer (for a more detailed nav bar, I don’t want to crowd the main nav bar).
Finally, I do hate those flashy websites. I suppose sometimes it can be good, with a clean simple design. But, I am not sure whether we can call those sites as flashy. They are more like elegant design..instead of ‘eye-popping’.
Anyways, thank you for the tips, Carol!
Jeevan, I don’t think anything I write applies to you 🙂 You always think things through before you do them and have a good reason for tying something. Ads are ok if they are what you use for revenue. But most people sell services and products and only use the ads to make a little extra money. The problem is that it’s so often a VERY little amount and for how much they can clutter up your site and disrupt people, I don’t think it’s worth it. If you make enough money to sustain your blog, that may be a good option for you. But if you’re only make a dollar here or there, I would propose using that space to sell your own service.
A lot of this depends, as you suggested, on the circumstances. But these are some things I would think very hard about before just throwing them onto a site!
I totally agree with you on the sliders. In terms of a call-to-action, they distract the user and make things harder to read. Compared to a focused call-to-action, the slider actually gets a much lower click-through rate for most purposes (unless you’re Amazon, Target, or have a lot of products, etc.
Ads – I have no idea WHY anyone would include ads unless you’re creating a site directed entirely at flowing as many eyeballs as possible past aggregated/rehashed content (a la UpWorthy, ViralNova, BuzzFeed, most newspaper websites, etc, etc). Sponsorships are totally different, though – “brought to you by” and so on, is a great way to pay for content creation.
I think with the revival of Flat design, you’re going to see a lot more CARDS-based design and a lot more statically-positioned footers as navigation elements. LCARS is coming, just wait.
I hear you on Pop-ups, but they freaking work. Ideologically, I *hate* them with a burning passion. In fact, there’s a whole tumblr dedicated to it (http://tabcloseddidntread.com/) — you can do it unobtrusively, but even so… most of these things are either stylistic choices that work in some contexts or sales decisions that make us feel icky (but work).
“anything that does stuff without permission” is also an interesting case study – you can only get away with this if you’re Facebook or Microsoft. Anyone else is dooooooooooooomed.
Great list, great points! Thanks Carol!
I totally agree with everything you said. Also, the thing about Facebook and Microsoft getting away with stuff is because our options are limited when it comes to ditching them. Every time Facebook does ANYTHING everyone hates it. But who’s going to leave? Did all your friends suddenly migrate to G+? For the average small biz, you get one shot at annoying someone before they move on to one of about a billion competitors. On the popup thing, the closing is also an issue, especially on mobile. I can’t count how many sites I’ve been forced to leave because the popup obscured everything and the little X was s somewhere off screen. They worked for us, too, but I wouldn’t say they were AMAZING. I would sacrifice a few signups for not feeling icky!
I’m having a love hate relationship with this post. Love the ideas, hate to implement. I have a few adds on the sidebar but nothing crazy. I have a footer but i don’t think it bothers anyone, and the one tiny pop up fades away by itself and isn’t in the middle of the page. Alas, I will look to eliminate the clutter and see if it helps.
It’s true! A love-hate relationship indeed. I would say, test what you want to change. So let’s say you have a great offer in the sidebar but it’s getting cluttered by stuff. Unclutter it and see if your conversions go up!
Hi Carol
A short and spot on list – Popups in particular really irritate me but you see them on very prestigious sites – no idea why.
I’m starting to grow tired of sliders and interestingly I don’t have one on any of my own sites.
BTW – are you using the Divi theme?
One or two clues are saying Divi.
I visited a site that literally had THREE popups on the same page. I thought maybe I was on the page too long?? Yes, we are using Divi 🙂 Love it. The only problem is that you have about a billion options and you want to use them all.
I know what you mean about Divi and with Divi 2.0 soon to be released… there will be even more options.
I liked Divi so much that I put up a dedicated site… http://divitheme.co.uk/
Nice! I just read about the new changes today. If they keep working on it, with a few more tweaks it could be pretty much the perfect theme. The only thing that is sometimes a pain is that their CSS is super duper nested in weird ways that makes it tough to override sometimes. But their support is awesome so that helps.
Yes I also noticed that any custom CSS you add actually appears in the source code on the page.
I meant to ask about that in the ET forum.
Nice site you have here Carol and thanks for the chat.
Yes, I noticed that too. Sometimes works against you. Perfection is coming, I’m sure 🙂
I enjoy your articles Carol Lynn! I agree with these. Thanks! I’ll keep it all in mind as I develop my website.
Thank you Selah! Good luck with your site, I know how much goes into it!
Hi Carol Lynn,
Actually, this was a great post! I’m sure you’d hate my site, but, I have to say, I do get subscribers from the slider and the Scroll Triggered Box. The big marketers call this “plugging up the holes in your bucket.” I’m not a fan of pop ups but, again they have their purpose and then there are the stats to prove it.
If I start to see a real decline in subscriptions, I might just follow your flog and eradicate system.
Thanks for an entertaining post.
Whatever works is what you should do! I did find that we got more subscriptions from the popup but in the end, for us, it wasn’t worth the distraction. I’d be curious though, if you would get more response to your offer if it wasn’t in a slider and people could focus on it… just a thought!
All very good points Carol, I think most of them got tossed with my website redesign too.
I do miss the subscriptions from the popup, but then I have heard some other interesting takes on that lately and I think I will not be putting it back. Trying to get leads in other more creative and useful ways. And qualified leads, even better right?
Same with us – got some signups but done with it now! I think you bring up a good point which is that if you put something free in front of someone’s face, their instinct my be to sign up and grab it. But that doesn’t make them qualified. There are certainly other ways to get leads!
You know, I don’t necessarily agree that all of these things should be eradicated. I think each of these CAN work, but you have to be thoughtful about your choices. I think sometimes we fall into these habits of various functionality “because we’ve always done it that way” or “because everyone else is doing it.” Those are both bad reasons.
If, however, you are able to justify that sidebar, that footer, that pop-up, that ad, and create a plan around how that will add value to your site and your visitors, then go for it. But, I think if you add ALL of these things it can very easily turn into a sloppy, cluttered mess.
Pruning on the web is very hard because we have unlimited amounts of space. But, the best and most effective websites often strip away all of the noise and use a simple and effective message.
Exactly right! Sliders, sidebars, footers…all this stuff is a given and since most themes come with them, they end up there by default. I agree that anything can have its place if it fits the need but I would venture to say that *most* people can ditch all that stuff and be better off because I bet most of them never thought about it in the first place. Also I’ll stick my “get rid of flash and music” thing 🙂 Unless you’re a musician, in which case you get a pass on music.
What a wonderful article. Delightfully controversial, but something we all need to hear!
Of course there are always exceptions, but I think all the points are a good basis to start. If a client wants a slider on the website then asking the question “why” and really thinking through the pros and cons is going to be very important.
Here are my thoughts for what its worth…
Ads
Not all web site owners will be able to eradicate ads from their websites but in an ideal world they would. A client of mine runs an online newspaper- something that is quite difficult to monetise without ads. Although we could both do without the hassle of ads and the clutter that it makes, it’s not really an option. Good job you say “if ads are your sole source of revenue and that’s the way you want it to stay… then ignore this advice”. However for most bloggers the returns for adverts is very little- just like you say. I never set out to make money directly through my blog. My blog is a way of giving myself and my business more exposure which hopefully will result in more clients. Having said that, I’ve been surprised how much has come through from affiliate links. I do, however, feel strongly that blog and website owners need to be very transparent about which links are affiliate ones and to only recommend products based on how good they are and not on how much money you’ll get from them!
Popups
Ah, that old chestnut. I tend to agree with you, but I don’t subscribe to the view that pop ups are always evil. Firstly I’d like to make a distinction between actual pop up windows (that open a new window or tab in your browser) and modal “windows” (which is content that appears on top of your content within the same browser tab). Pop up windows are much more rare these days because they are far too intrusive and most browsers block them anyway. I’d probably put these in the “evil” category. There is something more “evil” and that is the javascript alert box that appears when you try and close the tab or navigate elsewhere. In these, you have to click “dismiss” to close the tab- very annoying. Modal windows are far less intrusive as long as they are handled well. I’ve been experimenting with one on my website for the past few weeks. My email subscriber list has rocketed as a result. I feel a bit bad about this (as I don’t like modals either) but it does work. They need to be done properly though so as not to annoy your visitors. I’ve been using OptinMonster which has an “exit intent” option (when the visitor is about to leave the page) which is good. Or you could set the modal to open when the visitor finishes the article (by scrolling down to the bottom). Either way, I think it is important to make sure that the modal doesn’t appear again to that visitor if they dismiss it- at least for 2 weeks. That is the way I’ve set mine. You can also set it so that the modal only appears on the 2nd page the visitor views.
The article that got me thinking about this in the first place was this fairly controversial one from Unbounce called Are Email Subscription Pop-ups Worth The Risk?.
I’m still thinking this one through. Mostly they are evil, but if handled sensitively they can work well.
Sliders
I had never thought about this until I saw an article written by Yoast- “Our themes don’t have sliders… Because sliders suck.” It really got me thinking. Most themes I’ve seen that use sliders load in an insane amount of Javascript and large unoptimised images and the result is a slow loading page of mess. That’s not to say you can’t have a well implemented optimised slider, but that’s perhaps not the point. Sliders can look good and snazzy, but mostly they are poorly thought through. They’re not evil or even bad, but you really do need to think through the reasons of why you would want one.
Anything That Does Stuff Without Permission,
I couldn’t agree more! Flash intros, autoplaying videos, music tracks. I thought these had been banished in the late 1990s! But no, I am still seeing them all over the place.
Anyway, thanks for writing this article. I don’t know how you do it- you keep on writing articles that make me think- and just look how much time you’ve made me use up writing this insanely long comment! 😉
Wow, Ian, I think you need to turn this into a blog post. Call it “Rebuttal to things that must be flogged and may only need to be throttled.”
I hate to say it but I don’t think I can add much because I agree with your points.
No doubt ads have a place and sites do drive revenue that way, especially news type sites. But mostly ads are something a few people throw in a few spots and how to make a few dollars. So sure, if they sustain the site, keep ’em on.
As for popups… love/hate. I never met anyone who likes them but yes, they work. And YES, if you are having great success, go for it, but I think you have the right angle – be unobtrusive and consider how you can make the experience better and more useful.
Sliders… big fat mess. Most sites don’t need them. They can be bad for SEO, bad for conversions and I’m sure most people use them because that’s what comes in the theme demo so they backfill instead of thinking through what works for them.
Oh, and an aside about affiliate sales – I don’t put those into the same category as ads because usually people promote those products personally and that can be very successful. One, your readers get (presumably) your honest opinion and two, you are essentially acting as a salesperson by proxy. Not just cluttering a page with banners and graphics and text that other people get to control. Affiliates and even sponsorships can be profitable and also helpful for everyone.
And as I was writing this I stumbled quite fortuitously across a page that has an interesting take on ads. I’m sure the same thing will happen when you visit, but read through and see if you get an inline ad that “appears”. I got a video that auto played (could be annoying) but had a “turn sound ON” option (not annoying!) Thought it was actually kind of attention-getting and not terrible. Although if we see this proliferate everywhere it will be a different story: http://www.inc.com/abigail-tracy/seth-godin-marketing-is-not-about-paying-for-attention.html
I’ll be waiting for your blog post 🙂 Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, I really appreciate it and I love a good debate. “THINKING” is underrated and often overlooked.
Thanks, Alicia, I’m glad you enjoyed this. As for ads. there is certainly a place for them but many times people go overkill and clutter up their pages. If ad revenue is your business model and it offsets the costs of your site, then by all means, use them! Unfortunately for a lot of businesses they put ads everywhere in hopes of making some extra cash and lots of times the revenue isn’t worth the clutter. It’s a judgement call!
Popups & Ads are definitely a buzzkill for any site that wants to relay information, but the sliders and footer things really came as a surprise for me. Sure, sliders use big visual themes to generate attention and then go swoosh to another visual theme, but they do let users navigate to the important stuff. In a site that is a maze of amazing content, don’t sliders act as a life float that help navigate people?
Sliders are generally ignored. Navigation helps people navigate – not sliders. Most people don’t wait for them to transition or bother to click through and in fact, tests have shown that people tend to scan right over them because they appear to be ads. They can also be confusing with multiple calls to action – do this, do that, visit here, click there. It’s best to focus someone’s attention rather than giving them a bunch of choices, because they tend to get distracted and then they don’t follow through on any action. They have also become so common as to be generic, and when that happens, people ignore them. I always suggest testing first. If you use one and it works well, then use it! Don’t follow rule just because someone (like me!) said so.