The case for fewer carousels
Carousels hide most of what you put in them. Here is what we build instead on portfolio and product sites, and when a carousel is still the right call.
- Priya Raman
- 2 min
Every few months a client asks for a carousel on the home page. We understand why: there is more to show than space to show it. But a carousel does not solve that problem. It hides it.
What a carousel costs
Most visitors see the first slide and nothing else. The rest of the content is still downloaded, still maintained and still reviewed in meetings, but it is rarely seen. Auto-advancing carousels are worse: they move while people are reading, and they are hard to use with a keyboard or a screen reader.
What we build instead
A ranked list. If five projects matter, show five, in order of importance. The index on this site’s home page is exactly that: names first, pictures on hover.
One strong image per section. A single large photograph, chosen well, says more about a project than six small ones in rotation.
A grid with a filter. When there is genuinely a lot of work, let people narrow it themselves. Our work page does this with two filters and a clear empty state when a combination has no results.
When a carousel is right
There are good uses. A product with several colourways, where the visitor is comparing near-identical images. A gallery the visitor has chosen to open. A row of logos, where no single item needs attention.
In all of these, the visitor is in control. That is the test we use: if the content moves only when someone asks it to, a carousel can work. If it moves on its own, we look for another pattern.
