Scrolling banners - a waste of space?

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Permalink Reply by David Garcia Dorvau on July 12, 2010 at 12:23pm

Actually i had the same consideration in mind so i will definetively benefit from the feedback.

To be sure about what you mean for "scrolling banner", can you show one example on the web?

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Permalink Reply by Anindita Paul on July 12, 2010 at 12:27pm

Could you give an example of a scrolling banner. I have seen the carousel of pictures that shift through the different frames automatically. Are you referring to banner that scrolls from bottom to top automatically. Haven't seen those for a long time. In case you give an example, taht will help me reflect about my behavior towards those.

Thanks
Anindita

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Permalink Reply by Mike Pifalo on July 12, 2010 at 12:42pm

Thanks for taking the time to read. Some specific examples I have found are below:

http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/index.html

http://usa.autodesk.com/industries/media-entertainment

There are others but I think you get the idea.

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Permalink Reply by Anindita Paul on July 12, 2010 at 1:38pm

Thanks. Two things, I have actually found these scrolling banners useful for informational ,internal websites. As a regular audiences to some of these informational websites (some of which I am member of) it interests me to see what is in feature. I have actually found usefulness from these.

Also, we are about to start a study on the usability of a commercial website that has such scrolling banner and actually we are comparing users reactions to the scrolling banners. I wonder if the nature of the website, or who the audiences are, their purpose and goals can affect how they see the usefulness (or not ) of scrolling banners on websites.

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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Olson on July 12, 2010 at 2:18pm

Hi Mike,

These rotating banners work when you have multiple messages that HAVE to be shown and limited space.

I can say you will see a drop in conversion per "slide" so if you're going to use them, keep that in mind. The further down the rotation the lower the conversion. People just don't want to wait or even "fast-forward" through them.

You could show a thumbnail or even textual "hint" of whats coming up next to offset the impatient users.

My recommendation is to only use rotating banners if there isn't another option. Don't do it for "wow-factor". Also, limit the number of slides to two or three.

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Permalink Reply by Bonni Dennison on July 12, 2010 at 2:39pm

Hi Mike, my experience is with an intranet site. We use rotating banners to advertise what is happening in the business 'now' and for what is important that needs to be highlighted (examples: initiatives, surveys, training, events). Every content provider wants their content on the homepage of the site, so this is our way to at least temporarily give them what they want. With 20,000 site pages, clearly everything new can't be dropped on the homepage, you have to have a strategy for where things should go and ensure they get there at the same time the banner is launched. We link from the banner to a circular with more info and include the path where the content will reside (if it is permanent content). We limit our rotation to 4 banners and we do not show thumbnails as it pushes the other content too far down the page. We let folks advertise their banner as long as we have the required space but we try to give them 7 consecutive days if we can. We generally put the newest, or most important info, in the first banner. Hope that helps!!

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Permalink Reply by Mike Pifalo on July 12, 2010 at 5:53pm

Thanks for all the replies. I'm really leaning towards the avoidance of scrolling/multiple banner messages. I really need to focus the visitor to self-identify and go down into specific pages, since we're basically trying to show them how they can use many products (solutions) to satisfy their needs.

@Anindita, I would be very interested in your findings from that commercial web site.

@Jeffrey, I'm with you in regards to the drop in conversion. Since our subject matter is already potentially complex, I think we should follow a simpler approach to get the user down to a very specific topic, and then at that point we could consider a multi-dimensional element.

We should be live at the end of September, so I'll be sure to report back our findings. Again, thank you for your input!

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Permalink Reply by Akshay Deshpande on July 12, 2010 at 9:13pm

Hi Mike,

I have some observation on this topic, may help.

For existing user it definitely helps. eg Intranet sites
However for new user it distracts.

I feel keeping scrolling banner would be my last option.

Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Niranjan Jahagirdar on July 13, 2010 at 1:49am

I think such banners can work only in case of highly focused websites such as health-related websites, news websites, or (to an extent) intranet portals, where most users would be looking for some info on information based on categories.

Another aspect that influences such banners' value is whether they come across as interactive (e.g. polls for employees, or action that users are required--not prompted--to take).

For the most part, though, company websites don't really benefit from such banners, but are better off with banners that automatically change. Eye tracking studies have shown that such banners are hugely ignored though (I'll try to fish out the image and put it up here).

Hope this helps,
~N

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Permalink Reply by Chris D'Arcy Bean on July 14, 2010 at 8:53am

Mike

these carousels are not particularly useful, but they do (when done correctly) allow extra information to be found on a homepage.

the main reason companies want to use these is to save on real-estate on a homepage. I tend to think that they are not noticed or used that much by the user, as they require extra effort to get to the information.

They are best used as an automatic rotator, as the movement draws the users attention to the carousel, and thus the teasers about your companies "leadership" idea(s).

The important things to remember are,
- that these are script dependant, and you want to make sure that there is a good non-script alternative.
- you should also make sure that there is an alternative navigation root to the same information.

Also remeber that each carousel panel, needs to link to it's own info page, otherwise you will find that users who land on the homepage via a search engine, may not see the relivent panel, as it is not the first in the sequence, and they won't wait that long to find it. - if you can put code in to influence the panel view based on the search route in, then this may solve that issue, but accross the board - very hard to do.

I was asked to put a horizotil carousel in a web application, by the company I work for, this request arose because there was a request to minimise the browser scroll bar use, whilst showing a visual (thumbnail) list of related web-applications that had equil status.

I noticed that the test users, didn't notice the left and right side scroll buttons (these were big arrows). When I did away with the arrows and put a native horizontil scroll bar on the carousel container, the users new staight away that there was more content, this lead us to stick to scroll bars, that appear when required.

Good times

Chris

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Permalink Reply by Keith Instone on July 15, 2010 at 5:38pm

As an FYI, here is the Yahoo Pattern Library entry for Carousels, which I believe is what you are talking about - http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/selection/carousel.html

It is interesting to read their definition of the problem / when to use it and think if your situation also applies.

I am not so sure it does: guess it depends if the user views the "banner" as content they are interested in.

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