The usability issues around carousels are well documented. But the obvious usability problems aren't the only reason carousels negatively affect conversion. There's another factor that people don't talk about as much, which is that they can have a dramatic impact on users' first impression of your website.
The power of first impressions
Research shows that the first few seconds of a users' experience on your website can have a dramatic impact on their behavior. In fact, another study shows that it only takes about 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion on your website.
What does all this mean if you have a carousel banner front and center on your home page? Every time you update a carousel, you're completely altering the most important seconds of the user experience – without even thinking about it.
Changing the visual hierarchy of the page
The design of a page sends powerful visual cues to users that indicate which content is important. Very simply: when you change a banner, you change the visual hierarchy of the entire page.
Depending on which banner happens to be showing, Puma is visually directing users to completely different content.
Creating too much clutter (or not enough!)
Users can immediately identify designs that seem cluttered or busy. In most cases, cleaner, simpler design reduces cognitive load and makes it easier for users to understand the interface and make decisions.
Looking at the Puma website, perceived clarity varies wildly depending on which banner is displayed.
Creating the wrong emotional impact
Users can quickly discern between sites that are visually stimulating (exciting), and ones that are more calming, or even potentially boring. The imagery and color scheme of a banner can quickly decide whether your site triggers the desired emotion or not.
Even Apple is guilty of this – their banner on the left is nearly 2.5x more exciting than the one on the right, ironic considering the headline on the right is "Flat-out fun."
So what have we learned?
This is a quality control issue. Rotating banners significantly impact users' critical first impression of your site. It's important to have a proper quality control process for banner creative to ensure that the user experience is consistent. You can use EyeQuant to get instant, objective feedback on how a large sample of users will likely react to new banner creative.