Lately I’ve been getting lazy with creating slider images for all my posts. It can be a lot of work! At first I loved making them, but then I think I got busy and a little tired of it. So I was contemplating removing the image slider from my blog, and thought I’d pose this question:
Do you like seeing image sliders on other peoples’ blogs?
This has nothing to do with your own blog, but purely about blogs you visit. When you visit another blog, do you look at the slider graphics? Do you ever click on the images to go straight to that post?
I have a poll for you guys to vote in, but before voting keep these in mind:
Yes, I love image sliders!
- You often look through the images.
- You often click on the images to go straight to that post.
Sometimes I like them. It depends…
- You like sliders, but it depends on the site and what the images are. Or:
- You sometimes look through the images.
- You sometimes click on the images to go straight to that post.
I don’t like image sliders
- You never (or very, very rarely) even look at image sliders. You just scroll right past them.
- You may even find image sliders annoying because they slow down the page a little or they’re distracting.
Poll results
Please vote in the poll! And feel free to share any additional thoughts by leaving a comment. 🙂
Poll is closed, but results are below!
- Sometimes I like them. It depends… (52%, 77 Votes)
- I don’t like image sliders (30%, 44 Votes)
- Yes, I love image sliders! (18%, 26 Votes)
Is it sad to say that I don’t enjoy them at all. I feel like they are in your face as soon as you click on a blog and I scroll down past them right away. SOMETIMES one will catch my eye and I’ll click on it. But usually I just go straight down to the blog itself and check out the recent posts.
I usually like them but it depends on the images in it. xD If they are like yours, of course I click on them. They make me want to look! But if they’re images that don’t fit right and just don’t look good and stuff… I’ll probably skip the slider. :p
I am indifferent about them. I have probably clicked on them 3 times all together on different blogs.
It always depends, but most of the time I really like image sliders. It gives me a good sense of the latest posts. But the thing is, the blogs I follow, I follow them through Bloglovin’. I’m almost never on their homepage because of that, only on the blog posts and then you don’t see the image slider! So I think for me it’s only useful if I’m on a blog that’s new to me.
I’ve never been too fussed about image sliders on blogs. I’ve come across some that have been done badly (design of the blog) or done really well, but sometimes it can take away the focus on the posts.
Georgie @ What She Reads
I don’t have any particular opinion on them really, although they can be annoying when they slow the page down. I don’t tend to click on them, though.
I don’t like them. I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on one. I usually scroll on down the page. I haven’t noticed them slowing down the loading time, but I’m usually looking at another page while one loads anyway.
For me, it’s not like having an image slider will immediately turn me off from a blog. I’m kind of neutral about whether or not a blog has one, but if I see a review for a book that I’ve been dying to read or one that I haven’t read yet, I may click it. Just yesterday actually I saw a cover for Racing Savannah on someone’s slider and clicked it because I remember her talking about the book on Twitter so I wanted to see her final review and stuff. But usually I’ve either already read all the reviews or know what review I want to read on that person’s blog and just go right to it. Thanks for sharing, Ashley! <33
I think they are a cool idea and are a great and colorful way to draw attention to recent posts, but for the most part, I don’t really like them. They slow down the page on 80% of the blogs they are on and even when I stop to look at them, I never click on them. I actually have noticed that some blogs, clicking on the image does nothing at all. So I usually just go past them. I’ve thought of putting one on my blog, but I’m too lazy to make the images and I figure if I never use them, maybe a bunch of other people don’t either. I look forward to the results of your poll.
Hey Ashley, what plugin do you use for you polls? I went searching and found a ton of options and none of them look anywhere as nice and simple as yours does.
I use WP-Polls. 🙂 Love it!
This is an interesting discussion and I’m really excited to see the results of the poll. It’s kind of a pain to make slider images for all my reviews, but I also kind of like the latest reviews sliding along. I should try to figure out if anyone has ever clicked on it, haha
I really do not like them. I find them bulky and ugly, and I have never clicked on anything in one. In fact, I don’t even look at what’s featured in them; I just scroll right on by. Plus my internet hiccups every time I visit a blog with one.
If there’s an image slider I always look at at, and I do click through to the posts. BUT I hate the ones that have incorrect image sizes– I’ve seen a few where it’s just the book cover stretched out and pixelated and YUCK.
An image slider has to be implemented really well for me to enjoy it. If they’re just in your face as soon as you visit another blog, then I ignore it completely. It feels like the author is trying to hard to push promotion on to you. Also, because they’re graphic-dependent, I hold them up to really high standards. They’ve got to synchronise with the whole blog’s design, and they’ve got to be designed to perfection. Maybe that’s harsh of me, but otherwise, I don’t click through.
I used to have one, but I admit I got lazy too and couldn’t be bothered to keep it updated! It’s so much work!
I will look at them if they’re nice, but usually I ignore them. I’d rather just look through the posts on the front page (or further back if I like the blog).
I know that UBB comes with this feature, but honestly…blogging already takes up so much of my time when I’m not at work, that I didn’t want to ADD to it making images for everything. So I went a different route with making nice headers for the features/memes with the latest ones linked up in my sidebar and then my most recent reviews prominently displayed at the top of the front page (grabbed automagically thanks to you, lol). No extra work involved…just post and go! 🙂
Usually, I don’t click on them because:
–the images look like crap. the dimensions don’t fit, or the text is blurry, etc.
–if they slow down a page. or maybe it’s all the other widgets and images and stuff packed on the sidebar(s).
They do catch my attention if nicely done, but 95% of them aren’t.
To be honest I rarely click on them. I do usually glance at them though just in case I have missed something I want to see. For blogs (like yours) that I follow by email, I never use them as I’ll have read the post already.
I thought they were interesting when I first started seeing them and even wanted one for my own blog (though realized not happening), but not I don’t really find them appealing. They are more distracting to me.
I don’t like them. They’re rarely done well, and they always slow down the website.
Image sliders are great as long as the images are visually appealing (I love the book banners on your blog).
I feel really mean for saying this because I know what it’s like when you’re first learning how to do graphics, but mediocre graphics drive me crazy, especially if they’re in your face the second you click on a blog. I’m less guilty to admit my graphic pet peeves: clashing colors, clashing font choices, and COMIC SANS. I probably wouldn’t care about these things as much if I weren’t on newspaper staff. There is not ONE page layout editor or graphic designer on staff that would rather use clashing colors/clashing fonts/comic sans than get slapped across the face.
Oh… I’m getting off topic.
Making book banners for the image slider on my blog is so much fun (I’ve even suggested making similar graphics to go with movie/CD reviews on my school’s news website), but I understand what you mean by being too lazy to do them sometimes.
I had an image slider once upon a time, but I hated dealing with making images for it, so I eventually took it down. I just didn’t want to spend a bunch of time working on that, and now there’s no way I would have time for that.
I’m not a fan of image sliders. I mean, I don’t actively hate them or anything, but I never click through, and I often find them annoying. I usually just scroll past them anyway.
Since I usually read my blogs through email and click on specific posts to comment, I don’t usually see them. But when I do, they are kinda cool sometimes.
Well I like them but I’m probably biased since I have one on my blog haha. I can’t say I click on them often, but I find they’re visually appealing (at the risk of sounding cheesy lol) IF they’re used with well sized images. If someone used a small image and blew it up to fit their slider then it’s fuzzy and ugly and makes a blog look lazy, imo, but when it’s done like it should (like yours) then I like them 🙂 I find they also add to the overall fancy/professional factor of a blog design.
I hardly look at those side images. Most of the times it makes the side bar look too busy, but it doesn’t bother me too much 🙂
I think image sliders look professional and admire bloggers who take the time to create them. At the same time, I nearly never interact with them. The majority of the time, if I’m visiting a blog, it’s because I follow that blog. That means there’s no need to click through to their posts from an image slider when I’ll see them all in my reader eventually anyway. It also means that I’ll never invest the time in making one myself
I love the idea of them but hate how they mess up blogs I am trying to view. For example there is a blog who has a slider and it causes the mobile site to jump and jump and jump..so I can only view their blog from a laptop.
It’s so funny that you ask this because within the last month or so I just decided to get rid of my image slider. I’m not very graphically skilled, so it was just too much work. And just now I was thinking – does it look better if I have it? and decided to go look at blogs that I knew had (or at least used to have) image sliders to see how much I liked it. And what did I find? Not only is yours gone right now, but you have a post asking the same question. Crazy!