5 Website Carousel Best Practices to Enhance Your Sliders [2024 Guide]

Website carousels—also known as sliders or slideshows—are a popular way for businesses to showcase featured content on their homepages and landing pages. When designed well, carousels can be visually engaging and help guide users to your most important products, offers, and messaging.

However, carousels are often misused and poorly implemented, leading to frustrating user experiences that actually hurt conversions. In fact, one oft-cited study found that only 1% of site visitors clicked on a carousel slide, and of those, 89% clicked on the first slide.

So does this mean you should ditch carousels altogether? Not necessarily. When executed properly, following UX and accessibility best practices, carousels can still be an effective visual design tool for some websites and audiences.

In this guide, we‘ll dive into exactly what it takes to create user-friendly, high-converting website carousels in 2024. We‘ll explore 5 key best practices in depth and analyze real-world examples of carousels from leading brands. Finally, we‘ll discuss how to measure carousel performance and when to consider alternative design patterns.

Website Carousel Best Practices for 2024

1. Serve a clear purpose and limit the number of slides

The first key to an effective carousel is having a single, focused purpose for using this design element. What exact user goals are you trying to serve with your carousel? What action do you want people to take after interacting with it?

Common use cases for carousels include:

• Highlighting featured or best-selling products on an ecommerce site
• Promoting current offers, sales, or events
• Showcasing customer testimonials or success stories
• Telling an interactive visual brand story

Once you‘ve clarified your purpose, limit the number of slides in your carousel to only those that directly serve that goal. This is one of the most common mistakes businesses make—trying to cram too many different messages into one carousel.

As a general guideline, keep your carousel to a maximum of 3-5 unique slides. Remember that on average, less than 10% of users even make it to the second slide, so prioritize your content accordingly. Each slide should be treated as an opportunity to communicate something valuable that your audience cares about.

2. Optimize your carousel media for quality and performance

The visual elements of your carousel play a huge role in capturing user attention and conveying your brand message. After all, most people are drawn to engaging imagery more than plain text.

Make sure to source high-quality, professional photos and graphics for your carousel. Blurry, low-resolution, or cheesy stock images will undermine your credibility. Consider investing in custom photography or illustrations for the most impactful slides.

At the same time, it‘s critical that your carousel media is optimized for fast load times. Huge image and video files are one of the biggest culprits of slow page speed, which is a major Google ranking factor and has a significant impact on user experience.

Use compression tools and optimize your image sizes to reduce their file size as much as possible without losing quality. Specify width and height attributes so the page reserves the appropriate space while loading. Implement lazy loading so the carousel doesn‘t delay the rest of the page content from loading.

Finally, make sure to rigorously test your carousel‘s compatibility and functionality across different devices and screen sizes. The last thing you want is a clunky, poor experience for mobile viewers. Consider hiding some longer text content or CTAs on mobile, displaying fewer slides, or even replacing the carousel with a static image on the smallest screens.

3. Give users control over carousel rotation and timing

Auto-rotating carousels are a major source of user frustration. It‘s all too easy for important content to slide away before the user has time to fully digest it. For this reason, many UX designers recommend avoiding auto-rotation altogether and letting users fully control when the carousel moves.

If you do choose to have auto-advance enabled, make sure to set a slow enough speed that someone could realistically read the text on each slide. A good rule of thumb is to wait at least 5-7 seconds between rotations, but do your own user testing to determine the right timing for your content and audience.

Always include obvious navigation controls like pagination dots, next/previous arrows, or even a menu of slide thumbnails so users can browse at their own pace. These controls should be easy to see and click on all devices—make sure they‘re sized appropriately for tapping with a finger on mobile.

Another key user consideration is accessibility for people navigating with keyboards or screen readers. Ensure the carousel can be operated with keyboard controls (like arrow keys to change slides or spacebar to pause rotation). Avoid infinite looping animations which can confuse or disorient users.

4. Treat each slide as unique content for SEO and accessibility

One surprisingly common issue with carousels is having the exact same content and links repeated across multiple slides, which is confusing for users and can trigger duplicate content penalties from search engines.

Instead, treat each slide as its own unique content. Write a distinct headline with relevant target keywords naturally woven in—but avoid overstuffing or sacrificing readability for SEO.

Include 1-2 lines of body copy that highlight the unique value proposition of what‘s featured on that slide using the language your audience would actually use when searching for or describing it. This will also help improve the slide‘s relevancy for voice search queries.

Also make sure to specify descriptive alt text for every image in the carousel. This is important not just for SEO, but to provide context for visually impaired users relying on screen readers. Avoid meaningless text like "Slide 1" in favor of something that actually describes the contents of the slide, like "Aerial view of Founders Plaza East in Arlington Texas".

5. Include a clear call-to-action on every slide

The best carousels don‘t just showcase content—they drive users to take a desired action. Every slide in your carousel should have a logical next step for viewers, whether that‘s learning more about a product, signing up for a newsletter, or contacting your sales team.

Make these next steps obvious with clear, compelling calls-to-action on each slide. Use a contrasting color for buttons and place them in a prominent position. Keep copy brief while conveying value, focusing on action words—think "Start My Free Trial" vs. "Click Here".

Also consider varying your CTA copy and destination across slides for the most relevant, targeted user experience. For example, a SaaS company‘s carousel might include:

• "See Pricing" on a slide about their features
• "Compare Us to Competitors" on a slide about their unique benefits
• "Read Customer Stories" on a slide highlighting a case study

Carousel Examples and Inspiration from Top Brands

Let‘s look at a few real-world examples of brands using website carousels effectively and break down what makes them work.

Apple

As usual, Apple sets a high bar for design with its simple yet striking homepage carousel. The product images are the clear focus, taking up most of the slide space against a plain black background. A bold headline and no more than two lines of supporting copy convey the key messaging concisely.

Navigation dots and left/right arrows are subtle but visible, encouraging users to explore more. The CTAs are simple yet effective: "Learn more" or "Buy", with the latter having an eye-catching blue color. With only 3 slides in rotation, Apple keeps the focus on its core products and brand story.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp uses its carousel to highlight different customer success stories, which helps build credibility and trust with its audience. The colorful illustrations catch your attention while still keeping the focal point on the concise copy and "See how we help" CTA.

The carousel auto-rotates but has a lengthy delay between slides and clear tap targets for the pagination dots, making it easy for users to go at their own pace. Only 3 slides keep it focused on the most impactful case studies for Mailchimp‘s diverse audience groups.

Nike

Nike has long been a leader in emotional branding, and its current homepage carousel is no exception. Dramatic, high-contrast product photos draw you in, while clever headlines play on Nike‘s "Just Do It" slogan to align with current events and social issues.

Slides auto-rotate at a slow enough speed to read the copy, with progress bars below showing how much time is left on the current slide—a unique approach to carousel navigation that keeps you engaged. The "Shop" CTA is consistent across slides for a clear desired action.

Measuring Carousel Success and Exploring Alternatives

Of course, to truly know if your carousel is driving engagement and conversions, you need to measure your results. Most web analytics platforms make it fairly easy to set up tracking for interactions with a specific on-page element like a carousel.

Some key carousel metrics to watch include:

• Number of clicks on each slide‘s CTA
• Percentage of all homepage clicks that carousel gets
• Next page path or conversion rate of carousel clickers vs. non-clickers
• Heatmaps showing where people are clicking within the carousel
• Number of swipe interactions on mobile

Based on this data, you can start to get a sense of how much attention your carousel is getting, whether certain slides are resonating more than others, and how the carousel is contributing (or not) to downstream conversions and revenue.

You should also look at implicit feedback like user session recordings and on-page feedback tools. Are a large portion of users rage-clicking through carousel slides hunting for something? That‘s a sign it may not be serving their needs effectively.

If your carousel metrics are underwhelming, don‘t be afraid to consider alternative approaches to featuring content on the page. Some other effective patterns to test include:

• A static hero image or single featured content block
• A row of featured products with a clear headline
• Expandable content blocks (accordions)
• A multi-column layout of important links
• User-friendly anchor links menu to different page sections

Key Takeaways and Next Steps

As we‘ve seen, an effective carousel in 2024 is one designed with intention, focused on addressing real user needs and business goals. By applying UX and accessibility best practices like limiting slides, optimizing for performance, providing user controls, using unique content, and including clear CTAs, you can create engaging carousels that enhance your site experience.

Of course, not every website will need or benefit from a carousel. It‘s important to critically evaluate the role of each element on your key pages and be open to exploring alternatives through A/B testing and user feedback.

If you do implement a carousel on your site, make sure to monitor its performance over time and iterate based on data. Think of your carousel as a dynamic, evolving part of your site, not a one-and-done project.

Ultimately, the key is to put your users first. Design with empathy for their needs, and you‘ll be well on your way to more effective, engaging content—with or without a carousel.