In compliance with the recent research– only 1% of 3 million visits to the website’s home page results in clicks on homepage carousel.The majority of clicks are made on the first slide and after that the click rate drastically drops with every following slide.
It’s quite surprising,considering the fact that it’s an important widget, found on many websites.
Apart from that, it’s a colorful and engaging graphic element, which must attract a lot of attention.
So why users tend not to engage homepage carousels? The problem is not the beauty of the carousel itself, but in its navigation and several other structural mistakes that designers unknowingly commit.
1. Replace navigation arrows with label navigation
After a couple of clicks without finding what they are looking for, customers look at the right navigation arrow that shows if any more slides are available. If they are, customer simply looses interest as he gets tired of endless line of slides and thinks that he will not find what he is looking for on your website. Thus, customer never gets to see the other slides of the carousel.
However, this situation drastically changes when navigation labels are used instead of small and hardly visible arrows. The results improve even further, when you add clear and comprehensive inscription on labels.
Thus, customer immediately sees if the product he’s looking for is on the website. Besides, you can place navigation buttons in a clearly visible area, increasing the engagement rate and amount of clicks on all the slides.
2. Remove auto-sliding, when user has already taken control
Auto-sliding is a very frequently used technique on the majority of websites that have homepage carousels. It helps users to engage with the most important content.
However, users will loose interest if auto-sliding doesn’t stop when they’ve taken manual control and are trying to get to the slide that's the most interesting for them or stay and read the slide.
Stop the auto-sliding as soon as they engage and you’ll see the considerable improvement.
3. Show new additions by rows, not one by one
Researches show that people like to browse new items in batches, because this way they can see multiple items at once. Despite of this, some website owners tweak their carousels in such way that allows items to be shown one at a time.
It’s very inconvenient and irritating and is fully capable of considerably reducing the engagement with the carousel. People don’t like to work more than they have to, which is why they will more likely convert if they will be able to see all the new items in several clicks.
What else can be done to improve homepage carousel?
Make items progression clear and compressive
People like to be in control - knowledge of how many items are there to see gives a feeling of confidence and control. If your carousel shows this progression in a non-intuitive way visitors on your website will get irritated.
Such situation occurs when a certain number of items is shown out of the entire number. Much better option is to show how many rows of items are there and which row the visitor is on.
Click targets must be bigger
When you design homepage carousel, you need to take into account that your visitors come from various age groups. Some people have better vision than others, which is why click targets on your carousel must be bigger.
Sometimes the size of the arrows is smaller than the cursor and this is unacceptable, because your visitors will get irritated and will quit your website, begin unable to find what they are looking for.
What's you experience with homepage carousel? We would like to hear your opinion from both points of view - user and business owner.
