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Month: February 2014

Time to abandon home page sliders for good

Published by Will Chatham on 2/20/2014

Our themes don’t have sliders… Because sliders suck.

  • Only 1% of the people actually click on a slide, which almost always was the first slide;
  • People simply ignore your slider, because it triggers banner blindness;
  • They slow down your site, negatively impacting your SEO and conversion rate(!!);
  • They don’t always work well on mobile devices,
  • They push your content down, which Google recently mentioned yet again is not smart;
  • It dilutes your message, because suddenly there are multiple messages on your homepage.

Convinced yet? Let’s abandon the notion of using slideshows/sliders/carousels on websites and make the web a nicer place to browse!

Time To Abandon Social Sharing Icons?

Published by Will Chatham on 2/13/2014

After reading the following article, I realized that I too have witnessed social media sharing icons on many a website never gain any traction. It is as if they are completely ignored. I went on and removed them on this website moments ago.

Why I’m Done with Social Media Buttons

As someone mentions in the article’s comments section, there are certain instances where social sharing buttons are a good idea, and you should definitely make them look nice and work well when they are useful. However, sticking them at the end of every blog post just because some SEO-grading web tool says you should is not necessarily a good plan, based on the evidence.

Keep in mind, I’m referring to sharing icons, not follow-me icons (those which take visitors to your social media page).