Sirius_B

Creative technologist with foodie tendencies. Life-long geek. Put-in-Bay native living in Cleveland. +3 boys and their amazing mother.

Over Dogs

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Originally posted by desingyouruniverse

I probably (definitely) spend way too much time watching sports (football, basketball, baseball) than I should. Maybe I should shift to watching sports with more diversity in legitimate contenders?

Then it suddenly occurred to me that I can save myself, and many of you, incredibly large amounts of time by acknowledging that in 2018, it is inevitable that every insufferable team will win out, so why waste your time? Sorry underdogs, it’s just not your year. Even if you are a fan of these teams, deep down, you know its anticlimactic when there’s no uncertainty to keep you on the edge of your seat. So here goes spoiler alert

2018 Eventual Champs

  1. Alabama
  2. Patriots
  3. Kentucky
  4. Warriors
  5. Yankees

That was easy! Save yourself for the Olympics, X-Games, and American Ninja Warrior. Or just read a good book, get some exercise, spend time with your friends and family… :)

You’re welcome!

Tagged: sport2018 predictions.

Slider Me Not

Slider Definition

Content sliders, also called carousels, sliders, image rotators, featured content modules etc. began to explode in usage on websites around the same time that the JavaScript framework jQuery surged in popularity (around 2008) though the concept had been around a lot longer. They probably emerged for a number of reasons but the liberal use of Flash in web page headers, irrational belief that the “page fold” was actually an issue, and the popular cover-flow design pattern that was first seen in iTunes 7 are all likely big contributors.

With the simplification of JavaScript animation thanks in large part to jQuery, it was easier than ever to rotate elements like a side show. This was very “Web 2.0” and allowed a designer to pack a lot more content into a single space on a web page. Free from the constraints of Flash, sliders could contain any sort of HTML including rich text, images, videos, and forms.

Nowadays, the content slider is so pervasive that it can be found on just about any kind of website yet despite the ubiquity of the slider, how effective are they and are they even a good idea in the first place?

Research

When we take a look at what the web design industry has to say, we see a number valid points raised along with some relevant data to provide objectivity.

Erik Runyon published data from a study he did in 2013 on the University of Notre Dame website. Looking at 3.7 million visits to the ND home page, only about 1% clicked on a feature article in the carousel and of that 1% nine out of ten clicked on the item in the first position (there were 5 slider items).

A study on the University of York around the same time period saw similar results in carousel item engagement with a big drop off after the second item.

Looking at the analytics of a couple websites we manage we continued to see similar patterns. For one client in particular we observed the following:

  • From February 18 2015 through March 18th 2015, the home page receive almost 12,000 clicks.
  • The slider on this page had 4 items
  • The first item in the sliders received 1% of all the clicks during this time (around 120)
  • Sliders items two, three, and four received 0.3% (40 clicks), 0.5% (60 clicks), and 0.5% (60 click) respectively

Conclusion

As a driver of engagement and conversion, content sliders are simply just not very effective.

Takeaways

So are we to conclude that content sliders are bad and should never be used? Of course not. To help us understand what drives their usage and hurts their effectiveness we must consider why. It is hard for most individuals to quickly prioritize a list of items of various importance and even harder for teams of people to do so. Items that may be important often vary in importance depending on who the visitor is, whether they are new or returning, the season or circumstance of the organization and a variety of other reasons. Sliders allow us to avoid making these choices about prioritization and importance by tucking things into what seems like an innocuous, tidy package.

The Pitfalls

Banner Blindness

The pervasiveness of sliders and the transient nature of content in them invoke the same response in people that display ads do. The irony being that while some of the most important things are placed in a slider, this tendency makes them less likely to be noticed by the visitors for which they are targeted.

Poor Usability

The Nielsen Norman group conducted a study that showed that auto-rotating or transitioning sliders killed conversion, stymied usability, and caused information retention to plummet. Further, rotating navigation is often much poorer on mobile.

The Paradox of Choice

It might seem counter intuitive but the more choices you give a user the less likely they are to make a choice at all. This is known as the paradox of choice and has been documented with some regularity in user testing and focus groups. The data for sliders also supports this as evidenced by the linear drop off of clicks beyond the first element in most sliders.

The Lost Continent Content

Most carousels do a very poor job of showing what is next or what is previous to the current item. This leads to “pogo-sticking,” inaction, and a higher bounce rate.

Page Weight

A slider or carousel is deceptive in that it’s footprint is relatively small, and yet every item it has adds an incremental tax to the load time. With page speed being such an important element to everything from usability, customer satisfaction, conversion, SEO, and mobile, the impact a slider has on performance is extremely important.

So before you decide to use a slider make sure that:

  • You really need it (and if so, do you really need it on the home page)
  • You have a small number of items in your carousel (2 to 3 at the most)
  • You keep the slider items simple – white space improves reading comprehension and conversion
  • You don’t auto rotate (or at least give ample time, >15 seconds, between rotations)
  • You include a way to preview or provide hints to next and previous items
  • You optimize slider content to load fast with optimized images and concise messaging and by lazy loading items after the first element if possible

On a lighter note, I enjoyed this website’s commentary on the subject as well as Brad Frost’s take:

INT. MEETING ROOM

“I’m very important! I need to be on the homepage!”

“I’m also very important! I need to be on the homepage too!”

“I’m very very important, I need to be on the homepage three!”

“Let’s make a carousel! Everybody wins!”

THE GROUP HIGH FIVES AND CELEBRATES OVER A BLOOMIN’ ONION AT OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE.

END SCENE

Tagged: UXMythology. carousels. content sliders. usability. UX.