Carousels are a lazy and ineffective way to surface content on the web. Stop using them.
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Earlier this year, Erik Runyon the director of web stuff at the prestigious University of Notre Dame, took a close look at how their users were interacting with carousel content.
He found that of the 1% of users even engaging with the carousel in the first place, 84% clicked on the first item in the carousel and PRACTICALLY NO ONE (~4% each equally) clicked on the remaining items.
To put it another way, you gaining practically nothing by putting content in a slider.
This data mirrors my recollection of the tracking we ran on hiphopdx.com when we were working on a redesign circa 2010.
This is not new information, yet carousels are more popular than ever.
If you absolutely must use a carousel, take a read through Brad Frosts post over here.
But seriously, find a better solution.
Update: Chris Noto asks a good question in the comments “why is hiphopdx.com still using a carousel.” While I can’t answer for certain, I tried.
TL;DR – the 0.04% of visitors who click through the last item in a carousel still generate real dollars in ad revenue.
