Image sliders & site speed
-
We are having a new website designed using WordPress and the Genesis framework. We wanted to include header image sliders on a number of internal site pages, but our designer says that sliders on more than just the home page will slow down the site significantly. How much could they slow down the site, and what can be done to minimize their effect on site speed?
-
Yes, there is some truth in what your designer says, adding any additional images and media to a page will slow the load time, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
My advice to you would be this, if adding a slider to an internal page enhances the user experience (UX) then add it to the page, a well optimised image slider will not impact the load time of a page noticeably to a user.
Once your site is designed, you may want to consider running it through the Google PageSpeed tool, the tool will score your page and generate suggestions to help you make your page faster
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights -
A slider will only impact the page it is on. Adding a slider to the page will slow down that page (as does adding anything), but there is no reason that one of a sub-page would have more impact on speed than one on a home page.
However listen to what the designer is really saying. It might be that they are using load time as a polite way of saying "back off with the sliders". Slider do create an overhead both in terms of load time and in terms of drawing the eye and therefore detracting from other content on the page. They are powerful when used correctly, but can impact on overall effectiveness of the site when used badly.
I'd actually start off asking "If load time wasn't an issue would you use a slider on that page" and see what they say. Presumably you hired them because you think they're good, so see what they say.
If they say yes then ask how much overhead it would add if the images are well optimised, you choose a lightweight slider script and minify everything (because the answer is usually "not much").
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using WebP Image Alongside Existing Images
Is it worthwhile to add in WebP images alongside existing images? WebP Images can be three times smaller than PNGs and 25% smaller than JPGs, according to a plugin option I am looking at. The alternative WebP images are provided via CDN. Does anyone have any experience with this, and is it worth doing?
Web Design | | GrouchyKids0 -
What’s the best tool to visualize internal link structure and relationships between pages on a single site?
I‘d like to review the internal linking structure on my site. Is there a tool that can visualize the relationships between all of the pages within my site?
Web Design | | QBSEO0 -
Moving to new site. Should I take old blog posts with me?
Our company website has needed a complete overhaul for some time now and the new one is almost ready to go live. We also have a separate "news" site that is houses around 800 blog posts and news items. (That news site will be thrown away because it's on a completely different domain and causes confusion.) So we have a main site with about 100 decent blog posts and a separate news site with 800 poor posts. I plan on bringing all the main site blog posts over to the new site (both WordPress), but my question is whether or not to bring over the news site posts? All, handful, none? Another issue is the news site doesn't have Google Analytics, so I'm not sure if any posts actually generate traffic, but I can from the main site we do get some referrals from it. As far as quality of content goes, it's poor. Not sure who wrote it all, but it's mainly text press releases that aren't very interesting. Is it worth bringing over for SEO purposes or simply delete the site and create a mass redirect so all of those pages will direct to the new website's blog page? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | codyfrew0 -
I want to create a 301 redirect on a WordPress site, nothing's working...
Hello all, I'm hoping someone out there can give me a hand with this. I'm trying to modify my .htaccess file so that the site will go from maxcarnagemusic.com to www.maxcarnagemusic.com and also, so viewers will be redirected to www.maxcarnagemusic.com/home when they try to access the site. I've tried a few different things, including adding the 301 redirect plugin for Wordpress, but nothing seems to work. Can someone out there show/tell me how to create an htaccess file that will execute as much. I apologize in advance, my Apache experience is very, very limited. Thank you all in advance!
Web Design | | maxcarnage0 -
Could our drop in organic rankings have been caused by improper mobile site set-up?
Site: 12 year old financial service 'information' site with lead gen business model. Historically has held top 10 positions for top keywords and phrases. Background: The organic traffic from Google has fallen to 50% of what it was over the past 4 months compared to the same months last year. While several potential factors could be responsible/contributing (not limited to my pro-active removal of a dozen old emat links that may be perceived as unnatural despite no warning), this drop coincides with the same period the 'mobile site' was launched. Because I admittedly know the least about this potential cause, I am turning to the forum for assistance. Because the site is ~200 pages and contains many 'custom' pages with financial tables, forms, data pulled from 3rd parties, custom/different layouts we opted for creating a mobile site of only the top 12 most popular pages/topics just to have a mobile presence (instead of re-coding the entire site to make it responsive utilizing a mobile css). -These mobile pages were set up in an "m." subdomain. -We used bi-directional tagging placing a rel=canonical tag on the mobile page, and a rel=alternate tag on the desktop page. This created a loop between the pages, as advised by Google. -Some mobile pages used content from a sub page, not the primary desktop page for a particular topic. This may have broken the bi-directional 'loop', meaning the rel=canonical on the mobile page would point to a subpage, where the rel=alternate would point to the primary desktop page, even though the content did not come from that page, necessarily. The primary desktop page is the one that ranks for related keywords. In these cases, the "loop" would be broken. Is this a cause for concern? Could the authority held by the desktop page not be transferred to the mobile version, or the mobile page 'pull away' or disperse the strength of the desktop page if that 'loop' was not connected? Could not setting up the bi-directional tags correctly cause a drop in the organic rankings? -Our developer verified the site is set up according to Google's guidelines for identifying device screen size and serving appropriate version of page. -Are there any tools or utilities that I can use to identify issues, and/or verify everything is configured correctly? -Are we missing anything important in the set-up/configuration? -Could the use of a brand new subdomain 'm.' in and of itself be causing issues? -Have I identified any negative seo practices or pitfalls? Am I missing or overlooking something? While i would have preferred maintaining a single, responsive, site with mobile css, it was not realistic given the various layouts, and owner's desire to only offer the top pages in mobile format. The mobile site may have nothing to do with the organic drop, but I'd like to rule it out if so, and I have so many questions. If anyone could address my concerns, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Greg
Web Design | | seagreen0 -
Pagerank and SERP rankings downhill after site update
Our site underwent a major update in September 2012. We put the entire site in WordPress and did away with our static pages. Then, in February 2013, we moved our shopping cart pages from a subdomain to our main domain (in WordPress). In both cases, we had to implement a massive 301 redirect through htaccess as most of our URLs changed with the update. Our site consists of the shopping cart (WooCommerce), blog, and supporting pages. We noticed traffic starting to drop around the last week of November (2012) and it has steadily declined ever since. None of our shop pages have a pagerank with virtually all them showing a gray bar with question mark. Only the shop homepage has some pagerank -- that too from 4 previously to 2 now. Some of the words we used to rank very well for before, we don't even show in the first five pages anymore. At first, we thought it was a temporary situation that would self correct over time, but it doesn't seem to get better at all. All said, we have lost over 80% of our traffic from Google organic. Upon repeated reviews, the 301 redirects seem to be done correctly and we don't see any serious mistakes that could cause such a huge drop. So the question is are we missing something? Are we not looking at the right places? Any ideas where we might start looking? We're simply looking for ideas and a fresh perspective.
Web Design | | bizmanuals0 -
On site SEO opinions
Hi all, I have been testing different configurations for my on-site SEO for a while now and I think I am pretty much there. However it is always nice to know what other SEO's think about my keyword density and usage. My site is http://www.tomlondonmagic.com I am curious as to what you think regarding landing page content, whether you need lots or text or little text? I have just removed links in the text as I feel I want to keep as much juice on my landing page as possible. Thanks all!
Web Design | | TomLondon0 -
Site is losing traffic after relaunch
Hello, We've just relaunched this site in the last several days, and we're seeing some small (but stead) traffic decreases, as well as engagement decreases. We're aware that page speed (about 4 seconds from a non-cached browser) and some 404s are an issue, our team is currently working on both. But we're really looking for some constructive criticism here as to what we need to improve. Other issues to be aware of: lots of our social counts went back to 0s, as lots of URLs changed, and it wasn't possible to migrate comments from the old system, so those have gone back to 0 as well. We wonder if this might be affecting both users and search engines perception of the site. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Web Design | | FishAcct
Paul0