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Slick – Carousel

kenwheeler.github.io

61–70 of 119 posts

Re: Slick – Carousel

#61

I don't wish to engage in standard HN negativity, but I'd like to suggest that you should probably don't want to use a carousel at all most of the time. From the user's perspective, a carousel is just a random image. You'll get more conversions if you choose the best image instead of a random one. http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2014/carouselsarebadforcon...

Not everybody is concerned about "conversions".

If I'd get to redo the public website of our research institute, I'd add a carousel, because it looks cool and modern, and it allows you to showcase the work of different people without favoring one person by giving them the "best space".

And even if you have something to sell, it might be valuable to "wow" your potential customer, and to give them the impression that you are "cool" and "modern" and "state of the art" and have moving pictures of happy pretty professionals on your site.

Or, it might be better to have a big "BUY" or "DOWNLOAD" button in that space.

You can't generally say what's better for all use cases IMHO. You got to understand your visitors/customers, do testing if you can afford it, and so on.

Also, the main reason why carousels suck in my opinion, the bad usability (no touch, unclear if clicking moves to the next picture or opens another page, not clear how to move to other pictures) seems to be fixed nicely buy this script.

Re: Slick – Carousel

#63
post #33

I don't wish to engage in standard HN negativity, but I'd like to suggest that you should probably don't want to use a carousel at all most of the time. From the user's perspective, a carousel is just a random image. You'll get more conversions if you choose the best image instead of a random one. http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2014/carouselsarebadforcon...

The maths looks wrong; the distribution of clicks is only relevant if the total number of clicks stays the same. Essentially a carousel gives you a "second-bite" at your customer, i.e. the second image is a chance to convert those customers who haven't already been converted by the first image. Imagine you have two images one which converts at 40% and one which converts at 20% - but each image converts completely dif…

Sure, anything could happen. As Shana says:

It is totally possible that there are edge cases where we are wrong. While we’ve personally performed split tests between carousels and their elements and always came up with an individual slide (rather than the whole carousel) as the highest revenue generating source, it is possible that there will be some cases where a carousel is better for conversions.

To go with your example, assuming each group has 50%, it's still tough. The actual conversion rate of the carousel in your example will be T x 60% + (1-T) x 30%, where T is the fraction of users who actually wait for the second image. Some simple algebra suggests that for this to exceed 40%, you'll need T > 1/3.

Re: Slick – Carousel

#64
Sorry for the OT, but is there anything like this for user profile forms? A ready made CSS with placeholders for picture, name, surname, etc?

Re: Slick – Carousel

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's not a plugin problem, thats a demo page problem. And I typically disable that when there is responsive/mobile formatting in place

You aren't getting this are you? The carousel doesn't have anything to do with pinch or zoom. If you put it on your site, boom , pinch and zoom your face off. I chose to disable pinch and zoom on MY demo website, because it is already formatted for mobile.

Makes sense - I should have looked more closely. I was checking it out on a tablet since that's where I'm most interested in these controls. I should mention that the swipe behavior of this one is nicer than most, and so I'll definitely be trying it out at some point. I might make a few modifications to better deal with phones, but that's about it.

Re: Slick – Carousel

#67

I don't wish to engage in standard HN negativity, but I'd like to suggest that you should probably don't want to use a carousel at all most of the time. From the user's perspective, a carousel is just a random image. You'll get more conversions if you choose the best image instead of a random one. http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2014/carouselsarebadforcon...

I honestly can't think of an instance where a carousel is the best UI element to use, yet everyone requests them. Why?

How about text ads?

Re: Slick – Carousel

#68

I really like this - I have played with FlexSlider when a responsive slider is needed, but it doesn't resize its slides as its containing element resizes. This does it in a much more elegant manner, and the touch events also feel quite natural.

Yeah, looks better than the lot. Swipe.js, Slides.js, ResponsiveSlides.

Re: Slick – Carousel

#69
post #10

I don't wish to engage in standard HN negativity, but I'd like to suggest that you should probably don't want to use a carousel at all most of the time. From the user's perspective, a carousel is just a random image. You'll get more conversions if you choose the best image instead of a random one. http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2014/carouselsarebadforcon...

Carousel's have uses outside of image viewers. For example, every mobile application is essentially a bunch of views in a carousel.

The views in mobile apps are typically organized as a tree instead of a circle and require user interaction to move between them instead of cycling themselves. I wouldn't call them carousels any more than I'd call gmail a carousel because you move between views of different messages.

Re: Slick – Carousel

#70
post #36

I don't wish to engage in standard HN negativity, but I'd like to suggest that you should probably don't want to use a carousel at all most of the time. From the user's perspective, a carousel is just a random image. You'll get more conversions if you choose the best image instead of a random one. http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2014/carouselsarebadforcon...

Highly relevant: http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/

That is especially effective when you get towards the last few slides and it auto-switches before you are done reading.
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