How To Add a Slider in WordPress Homepage

(Last Updated On: November 16, 2018)

While there is a majority of people who wouldn’t believe it, however, the truth is that sliders are all about the ease and efficiency to execute an array of tasks all at once. For instance: if you want to showcase a product and add a CTA button along, sliders can let you do that with ease.

Either you can just keep multiple images sliding from one side to the other, you can even add texts or buttons, as per your requirements. And then, there is a wide range of features that come along to help you attract more people and achieve more goals. Right from boosting the website traffic to enhancing the search engine ranking, WordPress Image Slider can do a lot for you.

If you’re still skeptical, here is why you should be adding a slider in your WordPress homepage.

Benefits of Using Sliders in WordPress

Visual Attractiveness:

Although visitors love to come across attractive media, however, they wouldn’t like to scroll a lot for that. Thus, taking away this worry from them, you can make use of sliders. It will not just attract visitors but will also help you in showcasing everything that you’d want to.

Sliders are Hooking:

If they are attractive, they will surely keep your audience hooked, right? If you are keeping the placement perfect and the content alluring, your website visitors will surely find it difficult to neglect this element altogether. In this way, it will even help you increase the average time on page.

High Ranking:

When a visitor spends a long time on your website, it automatically triggers the positive aspect of search engine rankings. Popular search engines will have an idea of your website being engaging. Thus, your position will be improved.

Perfect Call to Action:

With a slider on your homepage, you can add multiple CTAs. This will even save the time for visitors to scroll at the end of the page just to find such an option where they can take some action. Along with highlighting the important aspects of your business or products, you can add a simple CTA button for good. Also, you can link these CTAs to any page you want to.

Should You Add A Slider on Your Homepage?

When it comes to adding a slider on the website homepage, you will surely come across a lot of varied opinions by market geeks. A lot of them might give reasons for how sliders are a bane, and some other would tell you how great they can be.

If you dig into the matter, you won’t find any shortage of perceptions on this matter. So, even if you think of putting everything aside and adding a slider in your WordPress homepage, you should stop and think twice. So, here is why you should display a slider.

Think About Your Objective:

It might be tough to conclude something without having a proper goal in mind. Whether you should put a slider on your homepage or not is largely affected by your objective. For instance, if you want to convey a specific message or let people know about your brand image, having a slider will make the job easier.

So, it is recommended to act according to the objective. Before putting up a slider, think about the action you’d want visitors to take. Be it a filling a form or signing for a subscription, it can be anything.

Therefore, make sure you are certain about your own requirements before you take the plunge.

Keep the Usability in Mind:

Another factor that will help you decide is the usability. There are innumerable websites designed in a complex manner. And, adding even a single element can destroy the ease of navigation or can prevent users from having a smooth experience.

If you’ve figured out your objective and are certain of putting a slider on the homepage, make sure it doesn’t affect the experience of your visitors in any way. If it doesn’t, you’ll have many opportunities to enhance your conversions.

Need to Increase Interaction:

Over the period of time, web developers and website owners have been using sliders to enhance the interaction with visitors. And, surely, this element has proved out to be effective in this matter. While not every other website requires a slider, if you think that the interaction is less on your site, you can surely experiment with this factor.

Keeping images attractive and the content compelling, you would be able to intrigue the majority of your visitors, which in turn can even help you increase your website traffic. Thus, make sure even if you are putting it up, you are making the most out of it.

Best Practices for Putting A Slider on Homepage:

If you have finally decided to put a slider on your homepage, there are certain best practices you should be wary of.

The focus is important:

Although a slider provides you an opportunity to post whatever you’d like, keeping the focus maintained is important. After all, you wouldn’t want your customers to go off the track, right? Thus, it is important to concentrate on the main message. Don’t divert your visitors to such a level that they end up closing the tab altogether.

Maintain Consistency:

While using sliders, you must maintain consistency. Displaying your product on one slide and showcasing a news story on the other wouldn’t make any sense. It will even prevent your visitors from experiencing any relevancy with the website.
If you think your slider is important and you want to display USPs of your products or brands, then make it consistent and interesting.

Don’t Go Overboard:

Surely, you have the liberty to add multiple slides, but it shouldn’t mean you start bombarding your website visitors with images, videos, and a massive chunk of information. Make your slider a low-profile element with charm and attractiveness alive.

Provide Control to Users:

Your website visitors will feel at ease if they’ll have the proper control over the slider. Sure, you can even make it an automatic thing, but it wouldn’t please your visitors much. Since not every other person runs at your speed, they will close your website if they cannot have a proper glance at what you want to communicate. So, allow them to control the slider.

How to Add Slider Using SlideDeck?

Thanks to WordPress, now it is easier to grab a plugin and add any element you want on the website. Similarly, when it comes to sliders, SlideDeck is one such plugin you can rely upon. It’s fast, responsive, and easy to use. Not just that, but it even provides different options of media to showcase on the slider.

So, here’s how you can add the slider on your homepage:

• Once you’ve purchased SlideDeck, you’ll get a downloadable file.
• Next, log into your WordPress website admin page, click on Plugins.
• Click on Add New and then on Upload Plugin
• You’ll get an option to Choose File, where you can upload the one you downloaded from SlideDeck
• Once done, click on Install Now and activate the plugin
• After installing and activating, you’ll get an option for New Slider

Clicking on that option, you can create your magic with sliders. And hence, adding a new slider is just that easy.

Conclusion:

Being in the business, you might get affected by what people have to say about a specific element. It’s best not to pay enough heed and use whatever you require. So, now, if you are looking for a responsive and superior slider, head towards SliDeck and provide a professional look to your website.