10 Great Homepage Above-The-Fold CTA Examples

10 Great Homepage Above-The-Fold CTA Examples

by | Feb 21, 2019 | Articles, Front Page, Reviews

Attention is so scarce online, you only have a moment to convert. That’s why a good homepage CTA above-the-fold can be so powerful – in first moment that someone lands on your homepage, they should immediately know who you are, what problem you solve, and how you can help them solve it. This article has 10 homepage CTA examples that use their above-the-fold content in the right way.

What is ‘Above The Fold’ content?

The term ‘above the fold,’ according to Wikipedia, refers to ‘the portions of a webpage that are visible without further scrolling or clicking.’

If you remember reading that old media interface we used before the Internet – the newspaper – then you probably know intuitively what ‘above the fold’ means.

“Most newspapers were sold from sidewalk kiosks,” as they say on OptinMonster, “folded in half so passersby could see the top half of the front page. If what they saw didn’t grab them, they’d keep on walking, and sales would be down. That’s why it was crucial to put your best, most interesting content ‘above the fold’.”

And what is a CTA?

CTA = Call-to-Action. This is the message that incites your user to do something specific.

Here are 10 lessons from 10 great websites that use their above-the-fold section to frame their CTA really well:

https://susanpeircethompson.com

Homepage Example 1: Susan Peirce Thompson

CTA: Take the Quiz Now

Headline: My name is Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D., and I want to help you get Happy, Thin, and Free.

Susan has a program that helps you decide in the moment when you should or shouldn’t eat something, with clear, bright lines.

What I like so much about Susan’s messaging is its clarity. She has a very well-defined problem she solves, and you don’t have to spend any time figuring it out. If you are struggling with your weight, she speaks directly to your problems, and you know exactly what you need to do next (take the quiz!)

LESSON: Clearly articulate what you offer right away 

https://problogger.com

Homepage Example 2: Darren Rowse

CTA: Subscribe to Problogger Plus

Headline: Become a ProBlogger

If you’re a blogger and you want to make a career out of it, you want to be a ProBlogger. Darren has been helping people level up their blogging game for a long time, and his advice is always friendly and helpful. (Read my review of Darren’s talk at WDS here.)

This homepage has lots of CTAs – join the Facebook community! Listen to the Podcast! Subscribe and Follow! Look at all these orange links! – but unlike most other target markets, this works for bloggers. We are a hyperactive bunch, and we know how to open links in new tabs, so I think he breaks the rule of ‘one CTA at a time’ very nicely here.

LESSON: Break the rules when it suits you 

https://tim.blog

Homepage Example 3: Tim Ferriss

CTA: Click to Listen

Headline: 300+ Million Episodes Downloaded

This blog is a vehicle to the podcast. Everything above the fold here is to convince you to get to the podcast – he’s got tons of social proof, the title of the latest episode (twice! In two different colors!) and any competing options are barely visible.

Tim Ferriss’ website does not exist to convince you why Tim is awesome – he’s beyond that point. Now he’s directing his audience to what he wants them to do next. He doesn’t want new website visitors to hire him for coaching (yet), or to approach him with VC deals (here), or to subscribe to his newsletter. All he wants is for you to listen to his podcast, because that is the strongest cornerstone of his platform, and the entry point to all his other offerings.

Lesson: Direct the top of your funnel to one destination

http://grantbaldwin.com

Homepage Example 4: Grant Baldwin

CTA: Join our Online Training

Headline: Want to Learn How to Find and Book Speaking Gigs?

Normally, your above-the-fold CTA should not lead to another website. When someone lands on your homepage, why would you want to immediately take them somewhere else? In Grant’s case, he’s got good reason. He has a very clearly defined Customer Avatar – public speakers who want to get booked and paid to speak. His signature course is promoted in his free course, which you find by clicking the ‘Join our Online Training’ button here.

This is a good looking homepage, and it validates Grant’s credentials and authority. If you happen to match his Customer Avatar, however, he wants to get you into his funnel right away, and his CTA button is a great way to do that.

Lesson: Make a fast lane for your Customer Avatar

https://www.melyssagriffin.com

Homepage Example 5: Melyssa Griffin

CTA: Click Here to Sign Up

Headline: Get my bangin’ blog business plan workbook for free.

This homepage includes an extra feature, something I usually see just a step or two lower down in the sales funnel: segmentation! By selecting the group with which you most strongly identify, Melyssa is gearing up a different automation sequence for you after you subscribe. Normally this is done in a follow-up email (as I typically handle it in the Stellar Email Template) but here it works seamlessly as part of the sign-up process.

The design of this hero section is bold and minimalistic, which helps offset the large amount of text in the selection boxes. I especially like the various options she presents JUST below the fold, encouraging you to scroll a little further (and to self-segment yourself again).

LESSON: Segment your audience at all the natural decision points

https://therisetothetop.com

Homepage Example 6: David Siteman Garland

CTA: Sign up for free training!

Headline: I help experts create and sell online courses

The hero shot here is really personable and engaging – I just wish it didn’t cut off his head! While I like the clarity and simplicity of his message – if you are an expert, and you create and sell online courses, you know that you want what he’s selling – I’m not a big fan of the color palette, and I think the ‘Get My Free Cheat Sheet’ CTA just above the fold is more compelling than the ‘Sign Up for Free Training’ in the green button.

What this homepage does really well is bolding out the big result his customer wants – CREATE AND SELL ONLINE COURSES – in a way that makes his Customer Avatar sure to dig deeper.

LESSON: Focus on the specific outcome your audience wants

https://socialtriggers.com

Homepage Example 7: Derek Halpern

CTA: Click To Get Free Updates

HEADLINE: Get With the FREE Program, Will Ya?

This is such a clear and simple homepage that it should be framed. The confidence in this hero shot – that is the confidence that Derek’s customers want to have. (Having your imagery visually convey the experience your customers hope to have is on the first page of the Stellar Homepage Checklist.)

While this could have been a very bland CTA – ‘join our weekly newsletter’ is in the start of the subhead – he’s put a very good set of copywriting twists on it that are intriguing, and make you want to learn more. It even says ‘free updates’ in the upper right, instead of ‘subscribe now,’ and that’s a good pivot. I also like how this homepage doesn’t celebrate the logo, but the logo’s typography still frames the visual experience. Instead of the logo being the champion of this website, it’s Derek himself, and that’s a much more authentic expression of a personality-based brand.

LESSON: Your homepage is about you, not just your business

https://entrepreneurshq.com

Homepage Example 8: Liam Austin

CTA: Sign Up

HEADLINE: The #1 marketing tactics of proven entrepreneurs – delivered daily

Normally I find ‘Sign Up’ to be a weak CTA in this day and age, but on this homepage it works. There isn’t a hero shot confusing you with the personality of the author – contradicting the previous lesson with Derek Halpern – instead, there is just a clear and simple value statement, and everything is framed around the daily email.

Putting so much effort into content marketing means that Liam does not want to dilute his main message (‘Sign Up’) with competing calls-to-action. He may have plenty of programs to sell, and media to review – videos, and podcasts, and ebooks, oh my! – but he will pitch you all those things in good time, AFTER you have subscribed. This homepage is a lot like a landing page – its goal is to convert you into taking ONE action, and other subsequent CTAs don’t distract you from taking this entry into the larger funnel.

LESSON: Optimise for the one action you want people to take

https://leopoldblake.com

Homepage Example 9: Nick Stephenson

CTA: Get the Book

Headline: Your Free Book is Waiting

Nick knows his audience, and they are heavy readers. The prospect of a free thriller is going to be exciting to his target market, but not to people outside of it. If he can hook a heavy reader with one thriller, the likelihood that they will purchase the rest of his books is very high.

Offering a free book is a big giveaway, and I especially like that he does not answer a relevant question here – is this a free digital copy, or a free hard copy? Just wanting to get that question answered is enough incentive to get someone to click.

LESSON: Be a little unclear, so users have to click to figure it out 

https://lewishowes.com

Homepage Example 10: Lewis Howes

CTA: Sign up to learn these 3 simple steps

Headline: Make a full-time living doing what you love

At first glance, the headline seems to be ‘Become The Hero Of Your Own Story,’ but I don’t think it is. I think that’s the tagline. The real headline for this homepage, and the message that frames someone’s decision to enter Lews Howes’ sales funnel, is ‘Make A Full Time Living Doing What You Love.’ That is the outcome-based value statement that tells the reader what they are going to get.

The hero shot is excellent quality, and the tagline does more to draw someone in to Lewis’ brand than the headline would. In this instance, I think it’s a smart move to have the tagline overshadow the headline. Without superior design, this wouldn’t work, but this is a good examples of breaking the rules the right way.

LESSON: Inspire users to level up, through you

https://www.nerdfitness.com

BONUS Homepage Example: Steve Kamb

Headline: We help Nerds, Misfits, and Mutants Lose Weight, Get Strong, & get Healthy PERMANENTLY!

There isn’t really a clear CTA on this homepage above the fold, but the messaging is so clear, it deserves an honorable mention. Nerd Fitness, run by Steve Kamb, has a very clear message – so clear, that if you’re a nerd who wants to get in shape, you won’t need a big flashy button for your call-to-action – you’re willing to hunt it down, like the Easter Egg in the bonus level of your favorite video game.

The hero shot is great, the headline is visually compelling, and the before-and-after photos peeking up from below the fold demonstrate the results. Some of the top-level navigation links could technically be CTAs, but without a clear button, or fillable fields, I don’t think this page properly has a CTA – but as I said, it’s so well-targeted, I don’t think it needs one.

So, what do you need on YOUR homepage above the fold?

Quicksprout has a simple formula, and they go into much more detail in their post about what to put above the fold on your website:

  • A well-written USP
  • Some brief explainer copy
  • Your branded logo
  • Simple, intuitive navigation
  • Contact info – especially important if you’re running an e-commerce store

This is their formula for what to include above the fold on your homepage, and it’s pretty straightforward. However, don’t just follow the rules.

A Contrarian View

Don’t Put Your CTA Above the Fold

It must be noted, putting a call-to-action above the fold is not strictly necessary. As we see above with Nerd Fitness, it’s not essential. There are even some A/B tests that have seen a 20% increase in putting the CTA below the fold.

“If you just rotely put the call-to-action above the fold,” Marketing Experiments says on their blog, “you may be making ‘the ask’ before your potential customer sees the value in why they should act. Or, sometimes, before they even know what you’re asking.”

If you have a solid reason for taking a contrarian position with your homepage CTA – like some of the examples above expertly demonstrates – then do it. Just make sure, as Picasso supposedly said, that you “learn the rules like a professional, so you can break them like an artist.”

That’s why I like website design and sales funnel strategy – there is an art to it, and it’s an art that generates revenue – especially when you know which rules to break.

About The Author

Caelan Huntress is the father of 3 kids, and in his spare time serves as creative director of Stellar Platforms. He is also a writer, digital marketer, multimedia producer, and a retired superhero. He blogs about his adventures on https://caelanhuntress.com.

What Does Gutenberg Change In WordPress?

What Does Gutenberg Change In WordPress?

by | Aug 25, 2018 | Articles

If you are looking to learn about Gutenberg in advance of the WordPress 5.0 release date, the best thing you can do is install the Gutenberg Ramp Plugin and give it a try for yourself. There are plenty of WordPress Gutenberg tutorials out there, but until WP 5.0 drops, we don’t really know what the effects will be. But so far, it seems to be mostly positive.

“For most casual users, it will, after some growing pains, bring a more flexible content creation experience.

Non-developers will be able to intuitively craft more complex layouts with extra elements like buttons, content embeds, and lots more. And that will, hopefully, help WordPress to continue to grow.”

– Colin Newcomer on CodeinWP

WordPress Gutenberg Introduction

The new editor is clean, sleek, and simple. As I said in my first-ever Gutenberg post on my personal blog, “If Medium and the WordPress WYSIWYG had a baby, it would be named Gutenberg.” It’s a much more intuitive user interface that will enable newer bloggers to create content easily and fluidly.

“Gutenberg is an obvious reaction to competitors of WordPress; the writing experience of Medium, the quick and easy site builds using Wix and Squarespace.”

Iain Poulson on Delicious Brains

Gutenberg was revealed in mid-2017 by Matt Mullenweg during an interview with Om Malik, and ever since then, there has been a lot of anticipation for this new editor. Because WordPress is open source, none of this has been secret, and friendly geeks have been investigating the ins and outs of the software as it develops. Some of the links below have detailed tutorials on how to use Gutenberg for your WordPress website, with some tutorials in text, some in video, and a few in gifs.

How do I install Gutenberg on my website?

First off, let’s determine whether or not you have WordPress 5.0 or not.

How to install Gutenberg on your WordPress 5.0 Website

Step 1: Install WordPress.

That’s it. The WordPress core will have Gutenberg standard on every WordPress installation.

How to install Gutenberg on your WordPress 4.X site

  • Go to Plugins → Add New
  • Search for “Gutenberg” (I used Gutenberg Ramp plugin, it worked fine)
  • Click Install Now
  • Wait – Install Now button will change to Activate
  • Click Activate

Installing Gutenberg early will give you the chance to see what it does with your website; if things will break, if things will go smoothly, or if it’s way above your head.

Gutenberg FAQ

What will Gutenberg change in my WordPress site?

After WordPress 5.0, Gutenberg will change the Post Editor (and Page Editor) that you use to create new posts and pages. All the remaining WordPress functionality will be unchanged.

Can I use my page builder with Gutenberg?

Yes and no. Yes, on the website, but no, not on the page.

Yes, you can use a page builder on a WordPress 5.0 website that uses Gutenberg as the core editor. No, you cannot use the Gutenberg editor and your Page Builder editor on the same page.

This website is built in the Divi theme, and uses the Visual Builder as the page builder for many pages (and even some posts). If I compose a post in Gutenberg, and then try to transition that post to the Visual Builder, it used to remove all coding in the easiest way possible: it will delete all the content in the post.

I tried a Gutenberg-to-Visual Builder conversion, and it refused to convert, I couldn’t even access the Visual Builder. But it did preserve the Visual Builder shortcodes.

wordpress gutenberg tutorials screenshot

I tried a Visual Builder-to-Gutenberg conversion, and this is what the screen looks like when you try to go to the Classic Editor:

wordpress gutenberg tutorials classic editor

If you try to return to Default Editor, or get to Gutenberg, you’ll lose it all:

gutenberg tutorials divi builder visual builder

Will Gutenberg change my eCommerce Store?

Since Products are a Custom Post Type, they will not (currently) be able to use Gutenberg without extra enhancement.

However, since I use WooCommerce on as the shopping cart on this website, I did see a neat little notice on here after I installed Gutenberg:

gutenberg tutorials woocommerce integratione

I did this to get one of my basic page-builder functions in Gutenberg, and it is something I can already do with WooCommerce shortcodes, but this is what a Product Block looks like in Gutenberg:

Can I keep the old version of WordPress instead of using Gutenberg?

I am quite sure there will be a plugin to attempt doing that, as there is always a plugin to handle any feature the user base wants; but since the old Tiny MCE editor is embedded in the core, it would take quite a hefty piece of code to transition it back.

If you really need to keep the old editor and refuse to use Gutenberg, your best bet is to stick with WordPress 4.9 and manually install any security updates, keeping your website increasingly obsolete. I’m sure this will be an appealing option for many to begin with, but I suspect that most people will upgrade in due course. 

How hard is it to learn Gutenberg?

Try one of the Gutenberg tutorials linked in this post, you’ll see how easy it is. Like any learning curve, though, it depends on your aptitude and your interest.

Writing a blog post in Gutenberg won’t be much different than writing a blog post in Medium, but it will have a lot of the core WordPress functionality and integration. Getting all of the new features to sync up will take a little study, but it’s not very difficult. I’ve found it to be very user-friendly – read the first post I wrote in Gutenberg, with glitches, here: https://caelanhuntress.com/2018/08/12/gutenberg-is-coming-to-wordpress/

How long does it take to learn Gutenberg?

It’s not long. After 3-4 posts, a novice blogger should have the hang of it; experienced bloggers will only need 1-2 blog posts to pick up all the differences.

Are there Gutenberg tutorials?

One of the best Gutenberg tutorials I’ve found is the WP Engine Gutenberg for Beginners tutorial.  – This comprehensive tutorial is full of gifs and is very useful.

If you like video, the Yoast team put out a great video series of Gutenberg tutorials for free on YouTube:

Will my old WordPress posts be affected by Gutenberg blocks?
Will Gutenberg affect the SEO of my WordPress website?

What’s New: Gutenberg Blocks

The Blocks are the most fundamental change to the editor. The Gutenberg tutorials linked above go into them in some detail.

Users of Medium will recognize the interface intuitively; but because it’s WordPress, you have much more flexibility and control than with a typical Medium post.

When you pop the hood and look at the the code, the Blocks code is pretty simple. It looks like this:

<!– wp:core/text –> <!– /wp:core/text –> makes a text block. Everything within those bracket pairs can be moved around, drag-and-drop, within the Gutenberg editor.

“Previously, your content lived inside one big HTML file and for every enhancement there had to be something new: shortcodes, custom post types, embeds, widgets and the like. All with their quirky interfaces and weird behavior. Now, you can build your content precisely like you make a LEGO set: all from one box, following a standardized and straightforward set of instructions.”

–  Edwin Toonen on Yoast

This sounds great, on the surface, if you’re starting from scratch. But what if you have an older website?

If you use a lot of shortcodes in your theme, this could present some problems.

“Currently, shortcodes cannot be executed in text columns or paragraph blocks. They must be placed in the shortcode block in order to work. This can cause some problems if your shortcodes produce inline content like the year or an inline call to action.”

– Nathan Ingram on iThemes

Gutenberg Glitches

These are the glitches I noticed while composing my first post in Gutenberg:

  • Making links doesn’t always work. The Link editor doesn’t always take my text, and I often can’t add a link easily.
  • Sometimes when I mean to backspace a word, it deletes the entire text block.
  • There is no undo when this happens; the text block I am working on is just gone.
  • The Fixed Background option to make images parallax often masks the image entirely in the editor
  • Sometimes deleting blocks is problematic, and I have to convert to HTML and manually kill it in the code
  • The images don’t display in the Editor the way they do in preview

An easy caveat: I created this post using the Gutenberg Ramp plugin, on a WordPress core that is still made to support previous versions of WordPress. This is also the early stages of rollout, and I made this post without reading any Gutenberg tutorials, so I am quite sure these glitches will improve over time.

Others have noticed some glitches and hazards too:

“Doesn’t support responsive columns yet. We really hope this is coming. A lot of times this is a reason people install visual builder plugins or shortcode plugins, is to get the column feature alone. It is definitely time for columns to be in core!”

– Brian Jackson on Kinsta

“Backward compatibility is going to be a primary concern for most developers. It will destroy current plugins and themes, especially ones that require integration with TinyMCE.”

– Manish Dudharejia

Gutenberg Plugin Compatibility

“Since announcing the database on March 1st, 70 people have been granted testing status. However, of 5000 total plugins, we’re still at 4139 untested plugins. No companies have stepped up to contribute a significant amount of person-hours.”

– Daniel Bachhuber on his blog

Of the 861 tested plugins that Daniel tested in April of 2018:

  • 219 (25.44%) are compatible.
  • 518 (60.16%) are likely compatible.
  • 25 (2.9%) are likely not compatible.
  • 39 (4.53%) are not compatible.
  • 60 (6.97%) are in “testing”, which means someone started test and abandoned the process.

That’s a decent spread, and the numbers may have improved. But as Igor notes below, this could cause big difficulties for Custom Post Types:

“If your plugin has a custom post type, then you may want to disable Gutenberg for that particular post type. To disable Gutenberg for your custom post type, you can just change your post type configuration.”

– Igor Benić on Tuts Plus

When will Gutenberg be a part of my WordPress website?

The answer to that question is very personal.

When WordPress 5.0 is released, every WordPress website that upgrades is going to have Gutenberg installed as its core editor by default. If you want it earlier, you can install a plugin, as described above. If you don’t want to upgrade to 5.0, you can probably coast on WordPress 4.9 for a number of months without facing any serious issues.

So, you will have Gutenberg on your WordPress website when you want it. Get ready, because it’s coming. Read some Gutenberg tutorials, or better yet, give it a spin.

If you want to talk about what Gutenberg could do to your WordPress website, schedule a consultation.

List Building with Lead Magnets

List Building with Lead Magnets

by | Oct 15, 2017 | Articles

Well-designed lead magnets are great for building your email list, and they also serve as tangible examples of how you can solve the problems of your customer avatars. When I took Fizzle’s 7-day Build Your List Challenge recently, I knew that designing a good lead magnet was going to be a core component of the course. I thought it would give me a new lead magnet for list building, but I was wrong. What I did not expect was how easy this process would make inviting new clients into working with me.

Even if you don’t know precisely what a lead magnet is, you’ve probably seen them before. ‘Subscribe to get my free PDF workbook!’ is a standard call-to-action, to encourage people to sign up for your email newsletter list. The PDF workbook is the lead magnet – it is the free incentive that you offer your new subscribers.

My previous lead magnet was way off base. I was using the Sales Funnel Workbook, which is an awesome piece of content, but it’s way too advanced for the type of person who usually hires me. I love geeking out on sales funnels, but my clients, they hire me because they do NOT love doing this. They want me to do it, and deliver them the results.

I’m really glad I signed up for Fizzle’s 7-Day Challenge, because I knew my lead magnet needed an overhaul, and even though I’ve got really well targeted customer avatars (you can see them here) I wasn’t offering them something that they wanted.

By doing the foundational work, thinking and strategizing about what my customer avatar really wanted, I became flooded with new potential clients, and I was also able to show off some of the digital skills that I rarely get to showcase.

Here’s how it happened:

Step 1: Sign up for Fizzle’s 7-Day Grow your List Challenge

This is an excellent email course – and I say that as somebody who produces autoresponder courses for a living. There was plenty of content delivered to my inbox every day, but it was scannable, and focused on simple outcomes and tangible wins.

Step 2: Do the work for list building

I must confess, I started this course three times before I actually got all the way through. The final time, I doubled back when I had a better idea. All in all, it took me 10 days for this final run (and a combined total of 5.75 hours), but the extra time spent was worth it. When you’re digging, you never know how far it is until you strike riches; sometimes you just have to keep at it.

Step 3: Make the right thing for clients, not for list building

To give myself accountability, I liveblogged my homework for this course every day on YouTube. You can see it here:

When I was finished, I was surprised to find myself with a Homepage Audit. This was a 48-question self-assessment that anyone with a website could use to improve their website design, functionality, and loading time.

I started making this into a Homepage Grader instead, assigning a score to every question, but then I realised, once again, I had made the wrong thing for my audience.

Step 4: Iterate, again – just not for list building

The kinds of people who hire me are not going to sit through a 16-step fillable form, learning all about their website flaws along the way. The types of people that hire me, they don’t want to do all that stuff – they want to pay somebody like me to give them customised, specific recommendations, and then to implement those recommendations.

So I offered the first part for free.

Step 5: Gateway Product instead of list building

I’ve been trying to pin down a gateway product for years, and I didn’t figure it out until I went through this experience.

All I did was offer free homepage reviews to my personal network. Anyone who has a website (those are my kinds of customers) and filled out a simple form would get a free 5-10 minute video screencast review of their homepage, where I would discuss the 4 things I liked about their homepage, and listed 4 things I would improve.

Here’s what I made:

These quickly became very popular. Nearly half the people that I did this for asked me, “How much would you charge for doing those 4 fixes?”

It worked like a charm.

By providing my services for free to people who matched my customer avatars, I was able to do a lot of things at once:

  • Demonstrate my expertise
  • Provide some actionable advice that they can use right away
  • Open a conversation about improving their website
  • Build credibility, trust, and rapport

As a client generation tool, this has worked really well. I became so swamped with new work that I had to set up a paywall; instead of offering my homepage reviews for free, now they cost a few bucks. It’s still a great value, but having a paywall filters out the people who wouldn’t want to pay for my services, and preserves my time and energy for people who are already willing to pay for the work that I do.

My email list? It’s growing, but not very fast. Everybody who got a homepage review became a subscriber. But I can’t use this as a lead magnet; it’s too time intensive for me to offer a 10-minute customised video for every new email subscriber.

Besides, what’s better for me right now: a subscriber that might buy from me one day, or a new client that will buy one of my services, right now?

Moral of the story: New clients are more valuable than email subscribers.

I’ll keep working on the lead magnet, because I do want a good passive way to build my list.

The big lesson I learned here is to follow your creative impulses, even if you’re going off track. If you know what you’re aiming for, sometimes going off track can give you a much better shot at reaching your goal.

About The Author

Caelan Huntress is the father of 3 kids, and in his spare time serves as creative director of Stellar Platforms. He is also a writer, digital marketer, multimedia producer, and a retired superhero. He blogs about his adventures on https://caelanhuntress.com.

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9 Reasons Homepage Sliders Suck

9 Reasons Homepage Sliders Suck

by | Sep 5, 2017 | Articles

Like many website designers, I have a negative opinion about website sliders. At least half of my web design clients come to me with detailed ideas about all the slides they want on their homepage, and most of the time, I can talk them out of it. It’s not that sliders are hard to create; any web designer knows how to add a slider in a WordPress homepage.

The problem is that on your website homepage, sliders are just a bad idea.

Here are 9 reasons homepage sliders suck:

1. Website sliders slow down your website.

A website slider is a hefty piece of code. Unlike a text box with an image, a slider is a fancy section that can replace its own content with an animated transition. That transition takes some time to load, and your browser has to do it.

Each slide is a big image, and that takes some time to load, too. In a typical slider, the browser has to load multiple images, animated transitions, and the controls for navigating the slider – all above the fold.

2. A slider above the fold is not a lazy load.

‘Above the fold’ is a newspaper term, defining the content that is above the fold bisecting the first page of the newspaper. This is where you put your most important content, because it is the first thing that someone sees when they are deciding if they want to read further.

On a website, ‘above the fold’ content is what is in the browser window, without scrolling, when the page first loads. Ideally, this should be your fastest content, because you want to give your user something to see right away.

Many websites use ‘lazy load,’ or asynchronous loading, so they do not download (or display) images from further down the page until the user scrolls to that section. This is good for website usability, because if you have to wait for the entire long web page to download before you read what is on the top, you are sitting and twiddling your thumbs, waiting for the entire page to be delivered to your browser, instead of reading the top and waiting for the bottom at the same time. Sliders that are at the top of the homepage (above the fold) have to load first, and your user has to wait as soon as they arrive.

Pro tip: Put your website URL in GTmetrix.com to measure how fast your website loads, and see how big it is. You should aim for under 1MB and 5 seconds.

3. Your first page load looks bad.

At this point (maybe now is good) you may be heading over to your website in a new tab to take a look at your own website slider, to see if it’s doing some of the things I’ve mentioned. Keep in mind, you have seen your website slider before. This means that that your slider images are cached.

Your browser has already downloaded the big images in your slider before, and your browser, helpful servant that it is, has stored those images in the browser cache. This is great for you, as the user, because it means you don’t have to re-download the images every time you visit your website.

But that’s just you.

New visitors to your website will have to load your slider images from scratch, because they have never downloaded these images before. What they see may be different than what you see.

Pro tip: Clear your browser’s cache, and visit your website homepage. How long does it take the slider to load?

“Every second it takes to load a page past two seconds hurts the user experience, and has an impact on search performance.” – Harrison Jones

4. Slider images are big and take time to load.

Your slider images should be big, anyway. If you’re using a 300px wide image in a full-width slider, it’s going to be pixellated and look really fuzzy.

While I do love the look of full-width images in web browsers, they need to be optimised for the web. If your image is 1.4MB, you are already way beyond the recommended 1MB threshold for total page size that you want to aim for, with just one image.

Using a tool like optimizilla.com, you can easily and quickly optimize your images, reducing their filesize dramatically. As a practice, I always run my images through optimizilla before uploading them to the WordPress media library. Watch me do it here:

Pro tip: Replace some of your biggest homepage images by running them through optimizilla. This free tool reduces the filesize of your image without sacrificing quality. Re-run GTMetrix after this, and you can measure precisely how much your images have been slowing your sitespeed down.

5. Website sliders are vulnerable to hackers.

The popular Revolution Slider, which has some amazing animation features, is often a target for hackers, precisely because it is so popular. Unlike the WordPress core, this slider plugin is not nearly as secure, and not updated as frequently.

This makes it a tempting target for hackers, because if they can exploit a vulnerability in a popular slider plugin, they can gain access to many websites quickly, before a repair patch is issued and installed.

Pro tip: Install the free WordFence plugin to check your site for malware and clean up after attacks.

6. Website visitors scroll down for more information, they do not wait for a slideshow.

How often do you land on a new homepage, and wait for the pretty slideshow to finish its carousel?

Do you find yourself hovering over the navigation dropdowns, obscuring the slideshow?

Or do you scroll down to search for information, ignoring the slides entirely?

“The primary purpose of your home page should be to create a high-level map of the world for your visitors so they can understand the range of available products that you carry. The giant banner will take up all of the prime real estate on the home page and push this navigation off the visible top of the page – sabotaging the page’s primary purpose.”   – Tim Ash

7. Multiple Slider CTAs split the user’s attention

One of the golden rules of landing pages is: give the user one option.

If you are sending a user to a landing page, through paid traffic (like a Facebook ad), you want this new user to do one thing, and only one thing. That is your Call-to-Action. Distracting them with other options (like your navigation bar or footer menu) will decrease conversions. In most cases, your homepage is not a landing page, but the same principle still holds true:

If you give your user too many options, they will select none of them.

[clicktotweet]

On your homepage, you’ve already got your entire navigation menu, maybe a sidebar, and (hopefully) a Call-to-Action to subscribe to your newsletter.

If you distribute some of these CTAs through your slider buttons, you are diluting the effectiveness of ALL of your Calls-to-Action. According to KissMetrics, “of users’ first three eye-fixations on a page, only about 22% are on graphics; 78% are on text (headlines, article summaries, captions). In fact, people often ignore images entirely until the second or third visit to a page. So taking up the majority of your page’s real estate with images is ass-backwards.”

8. Information in sliders looks better in columns.

Most times, if you are expressing separate ideas in separate slides, they would be easier for the user to view all at once, in columns. Take a look at these two options below, and ask yourself which is more effective for you, as a user:

Here is a Slider:

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is making your website easy to read by search engines. I wouldn’t go so far as calling Google stupid (it is, quite likely, the largest artificial brain on the planet) but it thinks in very different ways than we do. Part of the...
Read More

eCommerce Shopping Carts

At its core, the purpose of your website is to help strangers become customers. The transaction where this formally happens on the Internet is usually in eCommerce shopping carts. The moment a new customer pays you for the first time, that is when they are putting...
Read More

Third Party Integrations

Third party integrations can be confusing, but any website that is more than brochure-ware needs to manage multiple platforms by using them. What is 3rd party integration? Third party integrations with WordPress websites are when you sync another platform or account...
Read More

Here is the same information, in columns:

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is making your website easy to read by search engines. I wouldn’t go so far as calling Google stupid (it is, quite likely, the largest artificial brain on the planet) but it thinks in very different ways than we do. Part of the...

read more
eCommerce Shopping Carts

eCommerce Shopping Carts

At its core, the purpose of your website is to help strangers become customers. The transaction where this formally happens on the Internet is usually in eCommerce shopping carts. The moment a new customer pays you for the first time, that is when they are putting...

read more
Third Party Integrations

Third Party Integrations

Third party integrations can be confusing, but any website that is more than brochure-ware needs to manage multiple platforms by using them. What is 3rd party integration? Third party integrations with WordPress websites are when you sync another platform or account...

read more

Which do you like better, when you are scrolling down a webpage? I’m guessing the columns were easier for you to scan and digest.

 

If you don’t have a website theme that makes columns super easy, then consider a simple Hero Image. As the Altos Agency suggests, “A well-executed hero image serves as the very first glimpse of your site most visitors encounter, and should combine everything from your unique personality to a laser-focused look at just what you offer and why users might want to learn more. Pair that with a powerful CTA and you’ve got a static header image that actually attracts more clicks than any slider.”

 

9. Sliders are not that important.

 

If there was really something you wanted your user to see, as soon as they land on your homepage, you would show them that one thing. (Identifying that one thing is extremely difficult – that’s why it’s so important to work on your Customer Avatars.)

As Michiel Hiejman says on Yoast, “What you’re saying with a slider is basically: ‘I really don’t know which product or picture I should put on display on my homepage, so I’ll just grab 10 of them!’ In that case, you really need to add focus. If you don’t know what to choose, how would your visitors or clients?”

With every lukewarm offering you have sprayed across your slider, your website visitor gets more distracted.

“Unless the image slider is the only thing on your website (bad idea!), it’s not a good thing. It means it takes away attention from everything else – the stuff that actually matters. Like your value proposition. Products. Content.”

homepage sliders peep laja

– Peep Laja 

 

Do we need to talk about your homepage?

If you have a website slider that is dragging down your sitespeed, I can design a multi-column section that conveys all the same visual and text information as your slider, but loads your website much faster.

We can have a complimentary 30-minute consultation, and I can answer any questions you have about your website or digital marketing. Schedule a time here.

Or, you can purchase a video homepage review here -> 

About The Author

Caelan Huntress is the father of 3 kids, and in his spare time serves as creative director of Stellar Platforms. He is also a writer, digital marketer, multimedia producer, and a retired superhero. He blogs about his adventures on https://caelanhuntress.com.

August Afternoons

August Afternoons

by | Aug 1, 2017 | Promotions

Would you like to fix a few things on your website before the summer ends? We can do that in an August Afternoon.

As you may know, I’m going to New Zealand. While this transition takes place, I’m on a mission to clean up loose ends in my life and business. I want to help you do the same. If you’ve been embarrassed to send people to your website, or you’ve been avoiding getting needed help with technological issues, let’s get through these unfinished tasks together.

Our afternoon-long strategy and production session could include:

  • Strategic coaching about your business, brand, or website
  • Website troubleshooting and research
  • Specific copywriting work on a piece of content
  • Revision of your homepage or website copy
  • Review of your website and media properties
  • Suggestions for how to increase your sales
  • Competitive research and analysis
  • Project scoping for other contractors to carry out
  • Brainstorming ideas for a new email autoresponder sequence, followed by an hour of copywriting, followed by review and revision

Normally my rate for working on digital strategy, website design, and content marketing is $150 an hour.

However, for the month of August, I’m offering a 33% discount off my normal rates for these strategy sessions.

For $300, you can have me all to yourself on an August afternoon.

  • Is your website running slow?
  • Does your about page need to be rewritten?
  • Is a WordPress plugin giving you trouble?
  • Do you have an idea for a new product to launch?
  • Is there a lead magnet that’s 75% done, and you’re ready to finally make it happen?

Book your 3-hour strategy session today. Once all these spots are gone, getting my time at this rate won’t be available again.

(Unless I decide to move again to another hemisphere – we’ll see.)

I’d love to work with you during an August Afternoon.

Book your time here.

August Afternoons FAQ

If you’re in New Zealand, Caelan, will it really be a summery August Afternoon for you?

No, it won’t, not at all. If you are in the Pacific time zone (like 65% of the subscribers on this list) then New Zealand is 19 hours ahead. Wait, don’t do the math – trust me, it breaks your brain – because New Zealand is functionally five hours behind Pacific Time, but a day ahead. Still, don’t do the math – save your brain. Or use this converter.

I’ll be staying on Pacific time for my first few months in New Zealand, waking at 3am local time. The earliest starting time for August Afternoons(1pm Pacific) will be 8am my time.

So no, it may not be an afternoon for me, depending on where you are in the world. It also won’t be summer, it’s been snowing in Wellington.

My website has a lot of issues, can we fix all of them in three hours?

Maybe not all of them – but I can make a big dent. Many website issues can be solved quickly, and if you bring a list of improvements you would like to make, I will go through as many as I can in three hours.

For any issues I cannot fix during our August Afternoon, I will provide resources, tutorials, recommendations, and next steps – so even if it’s not fixed, you have a plan of action.

I want to improve my organic search rankings. Can you help me with that?

In 3 hours I can run a comprehensive set of reports on your website, detailing how you rank for relevant keywords. I can also perform competitive analysis, to discover what your competitors are ranking for, and offer specific suggestions on how to improve your own ranking for those keywords, as well.

I can also dramatically improve your sitespeed, which has become one of the largest factors Google uses in determining search rankings. By analyzing your site I can find the largest bandwidth hogs, and create a plan of steps for improving these specific issues. Some of those issues, I can fix right on our call.

I want to redesign my entire website. Can you do that in three hours?

Unless you have a very small website, then no, I cannot redesign it all in 3 hours. But I can rewrite a few of the important pages (like your homepage or your About page), rewrite your calls-to-action, or design a new version of your website in a sandbox.

Website redesigns need multiple revisions anyways, and you can get at least one out of an August Afternoon.

Can you plan my upcoming project, so that I can delegate it to my team?

Absolutely. Project planning is one of my specialties. Collecting all the different pieces of a project together, and identifying all the next steps (with lots of checklists!) will jumpstart that project that’s been languishing at the back of your mind.

How much time and money do I need to invest?

In addition to being present during our 3-hour strategy session, I will need you to describe your project to me in advance via email. I will review your materials before our call so I can come prepared with questions and ideas; your advance briefing will help me to be more effective for you during this project.

$300 will reserve 3 consecutive hours of my time. See availability here.

Can I purchase one of these sessions from you and use it after August?

The 3-hour strategy session is a discount off of my normal hourly rate of $150, and it is only available for the limited period of this promotion. Hiring me after August will only be in accordance with my standard terms, with a minimum purchase of a 5-hour block of time for $750. If your schedule does not open up until September, I’d be happy to work with you at that time under my normal terms.

What is the format of our meeting?

Ten minutes before our call, I will send you a short, funny, inspirational video to get your juices flowing. Then, we will each have an optional 1-minute solo dance party.

At the precise time of our appointment, I will call you via Skype, Slack, or phone, and we will bring up the agenda that I have sent you in advance.

Together, we will edit the agenda for our call for a couple of minutes, and then dive right in.

The format of our session is dictated by the needs of your project. We might talk for twenty minutes, and then break while I get into your servers and making improvements to your website. Or, we could be collaborating on a Google doc together, fixing your website copy and editing ideas together. We could keep the call going the whole time, call each other back and forth every thirty minutes, or talk once at the beginning and once at the end.

You’ll have your very own in-house outsourced marketing consultant for three hours; we can format this session whatever way we think is best.

I know my website needs work, but I don’t know exactly what it needs. How can we work together if I don’t know what I need?

I can help you figure it out. We’ll start by looking over your website together, and I’ll ask you a bunch of questions. Based on your answers, and what I see on your website, I will make recommendations for how to best meet your goals in the time we have. I will also provide you with a detailed plan for improving your website and platform after our meeting, which you can execute with any digital marketer.

“Caelan has a great way of taking your vision and making it a reality. He works really well with visionaries – I speak it, and he makes it happen! His website design for The Aware Show really captured my personality, and his project management skills kept my entire team on track. The beautiful summits he put together helped us to grow our list and expand our audience. Caelan is always positive and keeps a positive outlook on life!”

 – Lisa Garr

I don’t have a website, just an idea. Can we work on my idea?

Brainstorming an idea is one of my all-time favorite things to do. As a coach and strategist, I can help you hone your idea and turn it into an actionable project.

I need a sales funnel for one of my products, can you make that in three hours?

While sales funnels are one of my specialties, they typically take me more than three hours to make. However, we can work through the Sales Funnel Workbook together. This way, we could identify what assets you already have that we could use in your Sales Funnel, and build (or outline) a few of the other pieces.

My email newsletter subscription isn’t working, can you fix it?

This is a perfect project for an August Afternoon. If you need to get one platform to pass data to another, and customize what users see at different steps, all I need are some logins and an idea of what you want, and I can fix it quickly.

Ready to go?

Book your 3-hour strategy session today.