Often one of the biggest impacts on the page speed of home pages when we optimise websites is sliders (sometimes called carousels).

To get the best possible speeds from your site we will always recommend replacing sliders with a professional, attractive, static image here are the reasons why.

Simple Speed Calculation

Yes, your slider will probably only show one image or a few products at a time but in order for your page to be fully loaded every single image in that slider first has to be called by the visitors’ device. Even if you have losslessly optimised those large images to around 100kb each if you have 10 of them you are calling an extra 1MB of data PLUS the javascript to run the slide. Image file sizes add up and the more data your page is calling the longer it takes to load. There is NOTHING we can do about that you can not change basic mathematics or how the internet works.

Most Visitors Don’t View Or Use Them

You may think they look great but there is a lot of research that indicates your visitors will NOT sit there and watch your pretty slide show and probably not click on it. If they do then it would more than likely be the very first slide they would click on, so why have a slider at all? Your visitor has come for information and they want it fast. Here is a fun article from Yoast on sliders, they certainly do not mince their words but they are absolutely correct.

Yes, we know some HUGE sites like eBay or Amazon use them, but remember they run super-powerful servers and have teams of professional programmers who will constantly optimise their sites. This costs $1000’s.

The advice we always give is to avoid sliders (Sometimes called carousels) altogether if you possibly can. If you want to show products or posts on your home page this can be done without resource-heavy sliders.

Slider Studies Stats

1. Only 1% of people click on a website slider or carousel. Many of your visitors’ eyes will dismiss them as ads.
2. Of the 1% of people who do click on a slider, 89% of them click on the very first slide. (So why even have a slider?)
3. Only 22% of Call-To-Action clicks are on graphics or images whereas 78% are on text links or headlines according to a study by KissMetrics. By using a slider or carousel, you’re lowering the number of click-throughs to the information you want to direct your customers to.
4. In tests between 2 identical sites, one with a slider and one without the site with no slider benefitted from a 23% increase in sales.
5. 47% of people expect a website to load in two seconds or less and sliders and carousels slow down your site.
6. 53% of mobile users abandon mobile websites that take over three seconds to load. Carousels and sliders often don’t work well on mobile sites.
7. A slider or carousel can add between half a second and 5 seconds to your webpage load time studies have shown.
8. No matter how you design a slider or carousel, if they look like ads and most of them do, there’s a high possibility they will be ignored. Eye-tracking studies conducted by Neilson Norman Group found as soon as visitors perceived something to be an advertisement they turned their focus away from it.
9. UX Movement state that users find constantly moving sliders annoying and distracting.
10. Website sliders push your main content further down your page. Since 2012, Google has said that pushing content further down your page is harmful to SEO. Excessive scrolling will annoy your users and Google may penalise your site.
11. Search Engine land ran extensive studies and discovered that from 5,000 visits carousels only received 32 clicks that is 0.65% they are literally a waste of valuable space on your site.

They Will Cost You Money And Clients

When we get down to the bare bones of this subject using sliders will almost definitely cost you sales and customers they are just not worth it. Remember every 1-second longer your page takes to load will cost you 7% in conversions or sales.