[HN Gopher] Should I Use a Carousel?
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Should I Use a Carousel?
Author : DecayingOrganic
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-04-22 20:09 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shouldiuseacarousel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (shouldiuseacarousel.com)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2013)
|
| Some previous discussions:
|
| _2 years ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23754676
|
| _9 years ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6018316
| jrm4 wrote:
| Ha yeah. Carousel's aren't for users, they're for selling the
| idea that you know how to do web dev to potential non-techy
| clients.
| abstractbill wrote:
| Carousels aren't for users. They are for partners -- people who
| partner with you will do things in exchange for a spot on the
| carousel.
| andix wrote:
| Don't put text into a carousel. I think it makes sense for
| images. For example on a hotel page, show the people a few big
| pictures, even if they don't interact with the page.
| joncp wrote:
| Another link on the front page is that the bottom is dropping out
| of Netflix.
|
| Coincidence?
| rabuse wrote:
| Can't stand all the websites with "galleries" when searching for
| lists of things, trying to maximize ad impressions. I click away
| faster than anything.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I do think carousels have an important place in design:
| collapsing repetitive but possibly relevant content.
|
| Example:
|
| You are a contractor who makes their living off of their
| reputation. You have a set of testimonials (maybe 5-8).
|
| A user visiting your website may be browsing for several reasons
| - and may or may not be interested in what others have to say
| about you. Collapsing all of the testimonials down into a single
| carousel shows you have testimonials and allows the user to
| browse through them if they'd like without forcing them to scroll
| through each one.
|
| This content is repetitive - if you've seen one that conveys
| enough information - but each one potentially provides
| incremental reassurance for a user if they need that.
| layer8 wrote:
| The animation is still annoying and distracting to the other
| users who don't need the incremental reassurance. A
| "Testimonials" link to a separate testimonials page would be
| perfectly adequate, for those users who are interested in that.
| It even has the benefit that they can read through the
| testimonials at their own pace, and that you can include longer
| testimonials that wouldn't fit in the carousel box.
| spiffytech wrote:
| > A "Testimonials" link to a separate testimonials page would
| be perfectly adequate, for those users who are interested in
| that.
|
| This is one of those things that really needs A/B testing.
| I'd bet the other direction: that sites get more conversions
| if they show a few testimonials on the landing page, than if
| there's a link to a page full of them but none directly on
| the landing page. Of course, you could just do both.
| layer8 wrote:
| Right, user-friendliness and conversions don't necessarily
| correlate. I'd still like to encourage to optimize for the
| former.
| trinovantes wrote:
| It amazes me that major sites like Amazon still use carousels
| hateful wrote:
| Amazon has one of the worse ones. Especially in Prime Video -
| they show me shows I may like and if I like one, I get to click
| on the next one instead.
| interestica wrote:
| Maybe that's intentional. You've now paused to look at
| something you didnt originally intend to look at, but may
| pause long enough to read. And who's to say that "click
| adjacent" slide wasn't intentionally close enough in
| interest.
|
| Or maybe the intent is just for the subliminal nature. So
| when you see the same or related images later, you'll pause
| just a bit longer.
| cocoa19 wrote:
| Bonus annoyance points if the carousel rotates automatically and
| carousel is not scrollable with keyboard. It's frustrating not
| having enough time to finish reading the carousel slide.
| quelltext wrote:
| Should I Create a Snarky Website with a Rhetorical Question?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| If it is entertaining or enlightening? Sure, go for it.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I'm gonna go ahead and assume that the constant time between each
| switch was part of the message.
| noneeeed wrote:
| Hah, I like how this has one of the main issues I have with
| carousels, not enough time to read a slide before transition.
| routerl wrote:
| I was shocked that wasn't one of the points on the carousel,
| but then realized that _it is_ , in a "show don't tell" way.
| [deleted]
| sophacles wrote:
| I think that's why the last slide is "frustrated?"
| jdrc wrote:
| Aside from that, it's interesting how users expect everything in
| the frontpage now (Not that i m complaining). They seem to be
| blind to subpages and expect to find anything with a bit of
| scrolling. Hiding content behind curtains, like carousels do, is
| a bad idea.
| js4ever wrote:
| In fact they expect everything on the home page Without
| scrolling ... That's why they want carousel
| jdrc wrote:
| most of the times that someone asked for a carousel, it was
| because they thought it makes the page more 'alive'. which
| should be immaterial
| dt3ft wrote:
| Carousels need to die the same way <marquee> did.
| aendruk wrote:
| By being deprecated by a standards organization?
| radus wrote:
| I guess the first step is to establish a carousel standard
| then.
| ljp_206 wrote:
| The idea of this is almost enough to give me a panic
| attack.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| The author is sarcastic, but "being able to tell people in
| Marketing/Senior Management that their latest idea is on the Home
| Page" without interfering with the homepage is a significant
| business need.
| scarmig wrote:
| <p hidden>Senior management's latest idea</p>
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't this more of if (user !=
| seniorManagement) display = hidden
| ravishi wrote:
| Senior management doesn't use their users. They ask someone
| to open the page for them.
| mattkevan wrote:
| I once had a client's ceo phone me up in a rage because
| the website was broken, how totally unprofessional it was
| etc.
|
| After some confused troubleshooting, I discovered he was
| looking was printouts of the website he had his secretary
| make so he could look at it at home.
| dylan604 wrote:
| fair point. does senior management even know what the
| platform looks like? if (user ==
| onBehalfOfSeniorMgmt) doGrayball
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I didn't know that term, so I googled it.
|
| > Greyball was used by ride-hailing company Uber to evade
| city regulators and deny service to some customers...
|
| What the hell, Uber?
|
| > Uber did not receive any formal punishment or
| restrictions from the city.
|
| What the hell, government?
| dylan604 wrote:
| You might be interested in "Super Pumped"[0] on Showtime
| which is a dramatic telling of the Uber story
|
| [0]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11173006/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg
| _0
|
| Edit: Travis is a horrible human being during the time of
| Uber. Maybe he has matured and mellowed out now? However,
| his stink is still in my mind and has forever tainted
| Uber for me. I will never use Uber on any of my devices,
| ever.
| violiner wrote:
| On the rare occasions when a friend will ask why I don't
| use Uber my reply is "Because I don't support organized
| crime."
| BbzzbB wrote:
| The sources here on the topic of web design for UX sent me in a
| rabbit hole I doubt I'll get to leave today. So much great info.
|
| Thanks for the share.
| marcodiego wrote:
| We have to kill floats too.
| hexomancer wrote:
| The only thing more annoying than carousels are websites that
| hijack mouse wheel to do their own (always) poorly implemented
| scrolling.
| valenaut wrote:
| The only time I've actually liked this pattern is in some New
| York Times stories. They do it very well. Example:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/17/world/asia/in...
| yccs27 wrote:
| I think Apple started that trend with their product pages, and
| now web designers try to copy that and end up making it even
| worse.
| RegW wrote:
| > ... websites that hijack mouse wheel ...
|
| half way down the page - to suddenly reduce the size of the
| page content.
| paxys wrote:
| All of the problems they point out are when using a carousel for
| navigation or other interactivity. A lot of times they are simply
| for displaying something flashy and dynamic on the front page
| without really caring whether a user sees it all or not, and for
| that they work great.
| layer8 wrote:
| The dynamic display however is annoying for the users who _do_
| want to see it all, because the slides always change at the
| wrong moment.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Like all things, I think they can have a purpose. They are pretty
| good when the content is primarily image based and when the
| purpose of the content is for design/feel. However, automatically
| rotating is often questionable unless it rotates extremely slowly
| and the content is particularly unimportant.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| As long as you're fine with the vast majority of people not
| ever seeing the hidden carousel items, it's perfectly
| serviceable as an interface pattern. There are contexts where
| it's quite useful.
| vmception wrote:
| Agreed, most of my websites are essentially just pitch decks
| to check the box of some audience's quest for determining if
| they should take my seriously.
|
| And so since its not optimizing for engagement, it is purely
| aesthetic, but aesthetic in the sense that it can have poor
| features that other serious companies use. A Fortune 500
| website would have notoriously shitty aspects, do that if you
| want audiences that think that is clout.
|
| Fortunately my non-North American and younger North American
| audiences don't even care about websites. All commerce is
| driven straight through chat apps. And do I really want the
| clientele that thinks I need a website that they will
| accidentally find on a _search engine_ , or by accidentally
| typing a .com in the address bar by habit? no. I've
| considered make my fonts smaller and thinner hoping they
| think thats a problem and bounce, I like the aesthetics of
| thinner fonts but its more like thinking maybe I can just
| ignore the issue from the people who are less likely to be
| able to read it since they're not the target audience anyway.
|
| I'm pretty much never doing things for SEO. Everyone's just
| going to click through from a chat app, or a twitter feed
| because someone else was talking about it. Since a lot of
| people swear by other e-commerce books that never made them a
| dime and have opposite advice, maybe I should release my own.
| Zak wrote:
| > _All commerce is driven straight through chat apps._
|
| This sounds either very labor-intensive if you use humans,
| or like a bad customer experience if you use bots.
| vmception wrote:
| That doesn't really represent the experience of how rich
| the experience in chat apps are.
|
| People get their information from heavily populated
| channels (one way communication chat rooms run by
| personalities people like, defacto "influencers"), which
| are forwarded to people that didn't read it. Permeating
| many communities and private group chats in minutes.
|
| If it is labor intensive, its only that way for a week or
| two as you coordinate all of the posts with many
| channels.
| Zak wrote:
| When I read your earlier comment talking about
| "commerce", I was thinking of ordering a product, which
| strikes me as a bad fit for chat app unless it's very low
| volume (and a good fit for a website).
|
| Your bio talks about fintech and digital assets, so
| perhaps I was imagining the wrong scenarios.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| We use a horizontal scroll in place of it, pure CSS (scroll
| snapping, etc..)
| splatzone wrote:
| There are absolutely cases where carousels are useful -- like for
| showing lists of secondary content that users want to explore.
|
| They're not so good for text heavy or 'critical' content that you
| want people to definitely read.
|
| It helps if the content is visual and users can see the next
| slide peeking through, it hints that there's more to see.
| Autoplay is always bad imo
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I've tried pitching this, but my experience is that if a client
| wants a carousel, just give them what they want. If competitor X
| has a carousel, or big tech company Y has one, they're going to
| want a carousel, too. It helps to have analytic data from pre-
| and post-carousel, though.
| V__ wrote:
| The only case I implement carousels on websites is for images
| which are complementary to the content but not essential or as a
| hero element, but never absolutely never with changing text.
| jebronie wrote:
| I work at an ad agency and we have to send this link to people on
| a regular basis. We actually had a customer once who put 40 (!)
| carousel slides on the frontpage of his website and wondered why
| nobody is clicking through to the linked pages. When someone
| insists on carousels now, I tell them that it will also hurt
| website performance and therefore its ranking on Google. This
| shuts them up 99% percent of the time.
| jsf01 wrote:
| Hahaha this reminds me of a client that wanted to put his
| entire portfolio (120+ images including blueprints with text)
| into a carousel despite my suggestion that he use a gallery.
| And because he wanted viewers to look at every image he asked
| me to remove all controls, including pause and previous. So it
| was essentially a 10 minute JavaScript powered video slideshow.
| The whole site became so bad on his requests that I could no
| longer use it toward my portfolio.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| One thing I've noticed is fewer clients want carousels now, but
| we have had quite a few request a hero image with static
| content and a dynamic background. They'll add 4 or 5 hero
| images, and we'll just smoothly transition between them every
| 4-5 seconds while the text/CTAs remain the same. It seems that
| what they really want is just some animation and flashy on the
| page and the only way the average person knows to do that is
| via a carousel. As far as I'm aware, this style of hero has
| been much more successful when we've done it.
| julianlam wrote:
| It's amazing just how versatile the word "SEO" is.
|
| It truly is the cause of and solution to all of your website's
| problems.
|
| Or to view it more cynically, SEO is the Swiss Army knife that
| can simultaneously excuse away poor performance while
| justifying additional expenditure.
| gxt wrote:
| There ought to be a browser/os settings to disable unprovoked
| animations and transitions. All information should be readily
| viewable, and controls shouldn't be moving around unless you are
| the one to be moving them, looking at you android notifications..
| sockmeistr wrote:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
| [deleted]
| june_twenty wrote:
| I actually don't hate carousels and I am part of the 1% that
| click them.
|
| The stats don't lie.. but what is a better way to present
| information?
| aflag wrote:
| The stats can lie. That number is not deterministic for all
| carousels in all contexts. There are probably contexts where
| the user interacts and clicks through the carousels often.
| However, it is hard to get it right.
| duckmysick wrote:
| One way would be to show information sequentially, one piece
| after the other. Think how regular websites that you scroll
| down are organized - but also brochures or flyers. Yes, you
| have to decide on the order and one item will be the first. But
| you do the same with the carousel anyway. Plus, a regular
| layout makes it easier to scan for information.
|
| If you must hide some information for whatever reason (to
| preserve space, to increase user engagement metrics), perhaps
| tabs would work. They can have useful labels which are better
| than the navigation dots on the carousel.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| just put the information on the page
|
| if you don't have space, then you have too much information and
| need to make prioritization decisions
|
| carousels are often the reflection of the inability to make a
| decision
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(page generated 2022-04-22 23:01 UTC)