Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Hero Shots and Sliders

In the web 2.0 craze, almost everyone put a giant slider or hero shot at the top of their homepage.  Why not?  They're big, sexy, and provide a way to show off your company.  


Conversion experts say you should kill your slider.  

Designers say you need something to anchor the page.  

The problem is that most companies don't do or get anything useful with their slider.  They put up a slider for the sake of having a slider.

If you really want to get some mileage out of your slider, see what your marketing team thinks.  A large canvas that moves, grabs attention, and is best suited for visual media?  Sounds like a marketing wet dream.  (Look how well SlideShare is doing.)

Not all sliders are created equal.

Your slider should be clickable, encourage a single action, and respond to your visitors.  (Think of it more like a presentation than a web slider.)

There is nothing worse than a wordy slide that moves before I'm done reading it.  So many times, I have clicked back to the previous slide to finish reading and it slides again!  You got my attention.  I'm reading your copy.  Why would you want to interrupt that?

A slider should have a single purpose.  If your goal is to get someone to buy something from your boutique, your slider may feature various items from different categories, but it shouldn't also ask them to sign up for the newsletter.  

Finally, once you have captured someone's attention and convinced them to take action, you need a clear path to success.  A big "CLICK HERE!" button might be overkill, but making the whole slide clickable so they can't miss, isn't.

Sliders suck... but they don't have to.  What's on your slider?

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