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Why you shouldn’t have a carousel on your home page(thetomorrowlab.com)

almost 8 years ago from Ryan Van Gatten, Developer

  • Riho KrollRiho Kroll, almost 8 years ago

    The "You shouldn't do X, Y and Z" articles are gaining a lot of popularity these days for some reason. Design is finding a solution to the problem you're presented with, and a lot of times no two problems are exactly comparable. While I agree that the carousel isn't a good solution for a lot of these home pages, it doesn't mean this type of solution doesn't work at all for anything. There may well be a case where it makes perfect sense to use a carousel (maybe a web store that cycles through their featured deals, for example). It all comes down to finding a solution to the problem you're presented with.

    The takeaway here should be that we as designers shouldn't default to a specific solution just because it is used often.

    13 points
    • Clay MacTavishClay MacTavish, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

      Good point here

      0 points
    • John LeschinskiJohn Leschinski, almost 8 years ago

      Cycling through featured deals will only ensure that 90% of them are not seen. There is an infinitesimally small amount of situations where a carousel is the answer to a problem. Unless of course the problem is needing to bury content.

      0 points
    • Matt McFedries, almost 8 years ago

      As a business owner / marketer / growth hacker I see my apps home page as the opportunity to get attention, and hold attention long enough to get our value proposition across - I feel (for us) that a carousel might derail this process. Plus we're currently split testing our home page headlines etc and having a carousel would make this a nightmare.

      There may come a time when a carousel is something that might help our cause e.g. quickly cycling through customer case studies - but for now, it's a no from me :)

      Good discussion point though. Always good to revisit these things... it would be interesting to ask the guy the invented the carousel as to why he built it.

      1 point
    • Jon DarkeJon Darke, almost 8 years ago

      Totally agree. I think for conversion based scenarios (eg: e-commerce) they should be avoided if you can as research suggest they are not as effective in these scenarios, but only when promoting products or sales etc. For other applications they can be quite useful and relevant, especially when the content being displayed on later slides is only supportive or less relevant.

      0 points