Add a Slideshow on Your Website?
Should you add a slideshow to your website?
Yes, Add a Slideshow
- Slideshows provide many images in one space.
- Slideshows attract attention. One stops and notices.
- Slideshows can teach readers visually about the business or organization.
No, Skip the Slideshow
- Do you have a limited budget for your website? If you are a small business or organization, you may want to think about search engine optimization, utilizing social media to market your products, or developing more enticing content before you invest in a slideshow.
- The movement of a slideshow may not be a priority for your business message. Will it help you convert more readers into customers? And not everyone likes movement on a website.
- Be careful of load time – if your slideshow takes time to load, you may be penalized by a search engine.
Slideshow Examples
Lustig Dance Theatre features two slideshows on the home page. The site is built in WordPress with the Church WordPress theme.
Little Black Dress Society is built in Drupal. I love the pale gray swirly background image and the rounded shape of the slideshow.
Rutgers New Jersey Jewish Film Festival website is built in Joomla, using a Flash component for the slideshow. There are several slideshows elsewhere on the site, such as the one for the Graduate Program. Films for 2011 will be announced in September.
The site for New Jersey Space Grant Consortium is built with Drupal and features a slideshow of NASA photos.
Gregory Ruvinsky exhibits his charming woodwork creations with a Dynamic Drive gallery script built in Javascript.
Do you have any good reasons why a business should add a slideshow? Why they shouldn’t? Any great slideshow examples to share?
If you liked this post, see How to Display Information without being Overly Geeky.
I myself am considering adding a slideshow to my blog. I didn’t even think about how it could affect my load time/rankings. I wouldn’t worry too much about price, however: there is lots of free software that can do this nowadays.
Joe, in terms of price, it is expensive if you hire someone else to do it for you. If you think you have good design skills and can present a nice slideshow, then yes, it isn’t more expensive than other methods of presentation.
i put one on my newest site and it does look good, but has it helped with rankings etc, hmmmmmmm not sure yet
has only been live a few weeks and comments are good so far, but rankings are low
i am using joomla, any tips on why it might not be doing so well would be greatly recieved
I would work on the top part, the title above the slideshow. I find it hard to read.
In terms of getting more readers to your site, who would be interested in learning more about festival mobile stores? It appears that your market is strictly UK, so you should try connecting with other business people in the UK. That’s more important than the slideshow.
Leora
the title is actually a photo of the actual shops top part and as a gif image is a bit hard to read yes, will see if i can make a better one :)
yes the target is UK and i have been trying to target my efforts towards the UK festival scene as a whole, just it has a hell of a lot of competition so is being a bit slow of course
thanks for the comments x
It’s a tough world, business-wise! Lots of competition. Yes, please improve your top banner so it’s easy to read. Then talk to others (or rather, listen to others) – you are on the right track. People might choose your business because they like you better.
Doing my best, hence how i came across this page eh :)
True, but I’m not in the UK, and I don’t know much about your market. I can only give you generalized suggestions. Probably best to find some experts in social media in the UK – I see them sometimes on Twitter, but I haven’t paid much attention.
Hello!
I’m planning of putting slideshow to my site. Can you give me some more tips on why should I put this on my site? Thank you!
Bella, I would only bother with a slideshow if:
1) you have some great photos, graphics or other images that will help sell your products or services
2) the other parts of your site are going smoothly (spelling all correct, decent content, SEO ready) – in other words, slideshows are for enhancement
Great! Each slide can have an annotation, which is displayed directly on the page. The annotation can contain text or HTML, and you can use style sheets to control the text appearance.
Earl Dickerson´s last [type] ..Top Tips for Monitoring and Controlling Your Project
Earl,
Interesting that you mention annotations (or captions, as I would call them). I’m working on a slideshow in Drupal for a client that will do just that, show the caption over the image. It’s actually a bit of complicated CSS with transparencies but with a worthwhile result.
Hi again Leora
Did you see i made the changes to the site ( header logo etc ) ? :)
All has been going great guns with it and has top placements for many of its key phrases
Hope all is well with you
Ed x
Dr. Ed! So nice to hear from you. And I’m glad you have had success with placement due to key phrases! Thanks for staying in touch.