Slider mock-up

Sliding Down the Slippery Slope

Sliders are (almost) everywhere! You know what I mean, those big images that take up the topmost section of a website and slide a load of images in front of your eyes. You can have?have fading ones, sliding ones, ones that split the pictures up into shredder-like ribbons and then reassemble as a new image. They’re cool. They’re hip. But are they?any?use?

It is very easy to think that you have to have one, after all everyone else has one, don’t they? Following a crowd often makes sense, and we would be the first to say that some things on your website simply must follow convention. When a visitor wants to contact you, and all they need from your website is an email address or phone number, our job as the website creator is to give them that information as quickly as possible. We use the word “Contact” on almost every website because that is what people look for. They don’t want to interpret your quirky way of saying that simple thing “Drop us a line” is fine on the contact page, but if it is the menu item which takes them to the page they will have to think before they click, and we don’t want to make them have to think.

[smartslider3 slider=”2″]

So back to sliders and the question ‘Should I have one?’. If a slider replaces a simple image so that you can fit more images on a page, then maybe you should. If you are renting out a villa and you have half a dozen beautifully staged shots of the pool then you can either have a gallery or make them slide by while your visitor is reading your perfectly crafted copy.

Having a big slider at the top of the home page might make sense if your business is selling sliders, or maybe selling pictures, but before you demand to have one think about the visitors to your site. They are likely to have come there with a specific purpose in mind, to get in touch, to find out about your product, to buy something. The question you need to answer is ‘Will this slider make it easier for my visitors to do what they came here to do?’ and if the answer to that is no, then I suggest that maybe you should reconsider asking your web developer to add one.

If the answer is a resounding “Yes”, then let’s talk about what you want. For a couple of examples, have a look at this site we developed for Taste of India and for one with a fancy build effect try Look In The Book

Yours slipperily
The Team

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