9 Creative Ways to Use Text-Only Carousels
Sliders make a great addition to any website. Most commonly you’ll see them used with illustrations or photos, but you can actually make text sliders! These nifty little carousels have a variety of uses, from displaying customer testimonials to telling a short story. If you need some fresh ideas for text-based sliders, you’ve come to the right place.
Why Use Text Sliders?
While sliders are primarily used to display photography and engage new visitors, there are plenty of uses for a text-only carousel. But why not stick an image in any way? It can actually be better to use simple text instead of pictures.
- Images may be unnecessary, such as when displaying quotes or testimonials. Adding a random, unrelated image here could raise eyebrows.
- If you don’t have much room (such as in a sidebar), a text slider can be a good compromise.
- Images may be obtrusive, distracting, or interfere with a simple site design.
- You may not be able to find suitable images that match your website’s theme.
- Text sliders are much better on loading times. Images can be optimized, of course, but snippets of text do nearly nothing to page size.
When should you use an image instead? If none of this criteria applies, it’s probably better to use a text carousel.
- The images provide extra context. (This is very important! Every image on the page takes up a little bit more loading time — so each one should be useful.)
- The images mesh well with your site’s theme.
- You’re trying to draw the eye to something important.
- You feel images will make people more likely to click on your slider.
- You have a lot of room for large images and sliders.
- The images aren’t flashy and located somewhere where they’d be annoyingly distracting.
If you’re not sure what to use a text carousel for, we’ve got a few ideas for you here.
Customer Testimonials
People are inclined to trust other consumers more than a business itself. Customer testimonials allow you to connect with visitors, proving that your business is really worth using. It’s a good idea to have testimonials somewhere on your website, and a slider is a perfect way to display them!
So if you’ve received a few great, well-worded reviews, definitely display them on your website. If you want to pull dynamically from custom posts or a testimonial plugin, follow this tutorial to dynamically display customer testimonials.
Quotes
Some sites could benefit from having a display of quotes and snippets. You could have inspiring quotes on a self-help website, or particularly moving fragments from your latest book if you’re an author. Maybe you could begin each article with a few related quotations that will get people into the mood for reading. You could even cite your sources using a slider!
Link to Social Media
If you want to link out to your social media accounts, a text slider is one unobtrusive way to do it. A simple description of what you use your individual social media accounts for and a call to action could be much more valuable than a simple list of links. And if you have many social media accounts, putting them in a carousel can save a lot of space.
If you run multiple social media accounts — too many to list in a slider, even — you might find social media management tools helpful. They’ll allow you to manage and post to all your accounts in one place.
Content Promotion
If the promotions of your latest sale, book, article, or other product isn’t getting any clicks, you probably need to change up your advertising strategy. Thanks to annoying third-party advertisements, banner blindness can cause your own promotions to go unnoticed. Designing a promotional image that gets clicks can be very difficult.
One way to get around this is by promoting events with non-obtrusive text ads, displayed in a slider. Text, while not quite as eye-grabbing, won’t be ignored as quickly. You can still use buttons and a call to action to maximize effectiveness. These types of mini-ads do well on your blog since there won’t be any flashy images distracting users from reading.
Promote Latest Articles With Snippets
It’s possible to use Soliloquy sliders to display your recent blog posts. The slider will dynamically pull from the latest posts, so you can set it up and forget about it, and it looks great on your homepage, in the sidebar, or underneath an article.
There are multiple display options, including just an image, an image and title, and more. One of these options includes displaying an excerpt. So if you just want the title or excerpt in your slider, you just have to configure the settings.
Introduce Team Members
Want to give your employees a compelling introduction? Use a slider! You can include a quick snippet of who they are, what they do, and how they joined the business. Or you could use a quote from them.
You could also use a text carousel to introduce yourself in detail, with separate slides for your qualifications, work-related hobbies, and a short biography.
Product Features or Description
If you run an e-commerce website, a text slider could be used to describe or list the features of your product. Use it to list dimensions, shipping information, available alternatives or modifications, and other useful info that won’t make it into the main description. Just make sure you keep auto-advancing slides off in this case.
Tell a Story or Make a Statement
If you have a short story to tell, a mini-article, or want to make a bold statement, you might be able to tell it through a slider. Visual and interactive storytelling is a compelling medium that can turn first-time visitors into big fans of your work. Make sure to incorporate bold, interesting typography.
Referrals
If you run a referral program — or simply want to signal boost some of your favorite blogs and websites — a small carousel might be what you need. Provide the name of the company or website and a short description, and you’ll have a humble but elegant way to credit the people who have helped your blog or business.
Carousels Aren’t Just for Photographers!
Sliders have their common uses, namely for promotion and photography, but their potential is only limited by your imagination and technical know-how. Including a text carousel is great to display customer testimonials, promote articles or sales discreetly, or provide useful information.
Now that you have some ideas for text sliders, please check out our Facebook and Twitter for more guides, tips, and resources.
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