Web Marketing Via Slideshows

Web design is getting more complicated today.  I recall a day when designers could craft a visual design comp, PDF it, and send it to the client and it basically left nothing to the imagination. Early web design didn't move, didn't interact and the more confusing the site was, the more notoriety it seemed to get for being creative or inspiring. We are a long way from those days!

Now, I have to wear both hats.  I often get hired as a developer (development is typically viewed as more complicated and more costly) but I always serve as a usability and aesthetic voice in the creative implementation of sites.  And wearing the web designer hat today means [1] being responsible for the aesthetic approach, [2] crafting usable interfaces, [3] implementing layout and design using modern or classic principles (or both), [4] being a master of artful tools on a pc and mac, and [5] often project management. These ever broadening roles of a web designer mean you have to work fairly hard at keeping your head in the game.

One of the more popular clickability techniques on home pages today is the slideshow mechanism. In my experience, implementing a home page slideshow gets done in one of two ways: the right way, or the wrong way!

The Wrong Way

The Scenario: A designer has a fairly static site and the site owner doesn't want to work too hard at creating content on a regular basis.  The designer knows enough to encourage the group to keep the home page fresh and so a slideshow seems like a fairly simple way to simulate freshness.  Thing moving = content is changing = fresh! But alas, after only a few moments sitting on the home page you realize that that huge piece of home page real-estate does nothing and goes nowhere.

The Mistake: Having a simple slideshow is ok as a site element, but making a non-navigable non-interactive slideshow the primary home page feature is a big mistake.

The Right Way

The Scenario: As a good designer you know that the number one goal of everything on the home page is clickability.  You want your home page to draw the surfer in, click on stuff, hang out longer, respond to any and every obvious and intuitive call to action! Your site owner wants some eye candy on the home page so you recommend a slideshow, but in this case you recommend that the slideshow slides are actually promoting home page clickability and take the surfer closer to more relevent content.

The Solution: Everything has purpose (unless you are talking about the content on enginpost.com) so maximize the benefit of your slideshows by turning them into clickable eye candy navigation for your home page rather than just yet another slideshow.

So, now that you are ready to make slideshows happen, Marcel Eichner has written up a number of amazing slideshow examples using jQuery to get yours started. Click on the image below to learn more!