Trust me on this one.
In tweaking my website, I found myself becoming continually frustrated with my homepage slideshow (by the way, you know what I mean by slideshow, right? Those three or four pictures that change at a set interval, and say things like “Dynamic Solutions” or some other catchphrase of the month).
Anyway, I was getting frustrated, because I could never find the perfect interval. 15 seconds seemed too fast (it changed before the average person noticed and read the whole thing). But 20 seconds was too slow. And anything in-between seemed wrong too.
And then I realized something… those sliders weren’t for my web visitors. They were for me, and my ego.
In other words, *I* liked them, and thought they were important. But my website visitors? They couldn’t care less.
Here’s the plain, blunt truth: Nobody – and I mean nobody – is waiting to read all of your slides. So why have them? Because all they are is a distraction.
I got rid of mine. And my “go deeper into my site from my homepage” traffic actually went up. Which is the whole point of a homepage – to get people to go deeper.
It’s funny – I went kicking and screaming into this. I almost thought I had to have slides. After all, how else would everyone know all of the things I did (umm, maybe by the site links, or the three boxes below the banner pic?)
So I got rid of the slides, and wouldn’t you know it, my site performance improved. And now that I view my homepage, I like it a ton better without a changing picture every 15-20 seconds. The main message is there, and it stays there. And the marketer in me agrees – one solid message is better than three different ones any day.
Follow my lead here – get rid of your sliders. You’ll thank me.