Death To the Slideshow
It was a regular day and I was doing what I normally do while waiting, riding in a Uber, or just out and about — scrolling through my social media feeds on my phone for interesting content. This sponsored article from Forbes catches my eye. Once I clicked on the link, I groaned on the inside.
It was a slideshow.
It had 51 separate slides.
Let me re-iterate that. Fifty-one slides. Forbes presumably expects their users to click on their site at least 51 times in order to consume this content. I resolved to myself that I don’t have anything pressing to do at the moment, so I could bear to read this post all the way through. I click the tiny, nondescript ‘next’ button, hoping that my fingers didn’t accidentally click on an ad. I make it to next slide — for a couple seconds before I’m redirected to an advertiser’s page, forcing me to refresh my browser in order to view the content I originally came to see. Once I’m back the original article, I have to play whack-a-mole with an array of intrusive ads. I made it slide 2 before finally giving up.
It’s easy to imagine how exhausting this can be — we’ve all been there at some point during our adventures browsing the internet. However, as a user, I believe it shouldn’t ever be that difficult to consume a piece of content. Therefore, I propose a solution — let’s do away with these silly contraptions.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. There have been similar articles calling to do the same. Most importantly, the users hate it. One can look no further than Reddit to see users gripe about these dreaded things:
“‘A List Of The Top 5 Things You Just Searched Up To Get Information On’
So then why are there 15 slides?
OHH, several advertisements in between each slide! You got me.
“I get it. You want fucking page clicks and money, and you don’t give a shit. But tell me WHY those slideshows have to load so slowly, and why your content has to be so garbage?”
“My freekn [sic] FB page is BOMBED with these damn things….they are always slow and take forever to load. I just ignore them, after I blast FB for putting them up in the first place.”
“Seriously, it’s 2014, why the fuck should the internet be like a damn powerpoint?”
And the numbers also back up these sentiments. According to Adobe’s 2015 State of Content Report, consumers not only prioritize beautiful display and design when viewing content, but they will disengage when there are issues with such elements. Almost 40 percent of surveyed users said that they will stop engaging altogether when the images won’t load, the page takes too long to load, or the content itself is too long. 25 percent of users will stop engaging when the content is not displaying on the device they are using. Slideshows often take longer to load, due to more images, advertisements, and other site elements bogging down the page — all things that drive down user engagement.
Just last year, mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic for the first time with 51.3 percent of web traffic coming from phones and tablets. In addition, more people are getting their news from mobile devices than ever before. Those numbers will only grow in the future, with “seven-in-ten of those ages 18–29 either prefer or only use mobile for getting their digital news”. More often than not, online slideshows aren’t optimized for mobile devices. Pages either look too small or too big; the interface doesn’t take the differences between mobile and desktop formats into account — making it frustrating to properly navigate the site using the small touchscreens on mobile devices. As mobile web traffic continues to grow, online slideshows will only continue to alienate audiences in the long run.
I understand that slideshows, online galleries, etc provide value to online markers and content creators. They drive much-needed ad revenue, which is vital to the survival of media companies in the internet age. However, forcing readers to click on your page several times sends the user the wrong message, doing the site and it’s advertisers a disservice. As Atlantic’s Alexis C. Madrigal writes:
[Readers] may click through your slideshow, but they’ll hate you a liiitttle bit more than they did when they got to the site. And I bet they’ll feel the same way about whatever advertiser was unlucky enough to get stuck on the page with some stupid thing that a reporter did with a little bit of hate in his heart and fingertips
In the world of design thinking and user experience, the most important rule is to always center the users, their needs, and their concerns. If your site is causing the user to hate you, even a little bit, it is time to rethink your content and UX strategy. The individuals that make up your user base are people with lives, jobs, and things to do. Arranging content in a way that is either not user-friendly, time-consuming, or optimized for the devices they use most frequently tells them that you don’t care. For content-generating sites to hang on to their audiences’ attention, content (ads as well, if we’re being honest) must be delivered authentically, intuitively, and in a way that is mobile-ready and always centers the user.
The relationship between websites and their users are much like romantic relationships. In this day and age, there are millions of content-generating sites vying for your user’s time and attention. Users can tell when they are being taken for granted whether it’s through bad UX, overly invasive ads, and yes, slideshows. If your content and the medium by which it’s delivered fails to meet their needs, they’ll move on to the next site faster than you can utter the word “slideshow”.
Nia Johnson is a Business Transformation Consultant at IBM based in DC. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
