Carousels are very ineffective at showcasing website content. As part of a contract in which I’m helping to redesign a company’s website, I researched the effectiveness of carousels and found a plethora of research showing carousels (1) result in visitors missing the site’s messages and (2) make sites harder to use. Below, I’ve detailed the specific findings that back these claims up and included sources for the related research/studies.

(1) Visitors miss your messages:

• Research shows that users miss messages in moving carousels — not only the hidden 2nd, 3rd, 4th messages, but also very first message.In this study, a user missed the main message (which was in huge font in the center of the homepage) because it was in a moving carousel. [source]
• “Banner Blindness” – users can ignore messages in carousels because they can look like an ad when highly styled or moving. [source] [source 2]
• Studies show that users don’t click on carousels. In this study, around 1% of homepage visitors clicked on the carousel at all; of those who did click, 89% clicked the first image, meaning that they missed seeing the following images. [source]
• With one message highlighted at a time, relevant content can be hidden under a stack of carousel images and users may never see them. For example, if you have 4 carousel slides targeting the 4 customer segments, the homepage will alienate a large portion of users when they first land on the site. If a Bank comes to the site, there is a 25% chance of the carousel being targeted to them; if the first image they see is targeted to MNO’s, they’ll look away to the carousel to find information relevant to them, rather than waiting for content in the carousel to speak to them.

(2) Visitors find sites with carousels less easy-to-use:

• An eye tracking study testing 3 types of carousels showed that users found them distracting (4 on a 1-5 scale). [source]

• A carousel could decrease homepage load time if the images are high-quality (1 high-quality image is faster to load than 4).
• Moving UI elements can pose problems for international users as well as accessibility (screen readers and users with mobility issues). Slow-reading users can also get annoyed because when a carousel moves automatically, users lose control over the UI and their own reading experience. [source]

Related resources:

• On UX Stack Exchange: Are carousels effective?
• On UX Stack Exchange: Using a carousel on home page or not?
• On UX Stack Exchange: Are carousels effective on non-Ecommerce sites?
• Blogpost: “Carousel Interaction Stats“
• Blogpost: “Don’t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels, Ignore the Fad“
• Sarcastic website: Should I Use A Carousel?

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