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[How did Moz know that my question was about this?!]

I've just completed an audit of nearly 50 websites in the tourism industry and 90% had a slideshow, large image or video taking up more than the initial screen on the fairly large screened Chromebook that I'm using. I'm advising them all to ditch this and am often getting resistance from the site owners and their web developers.

I know that these can be better optimized for page load speed, which is poor for most of these sites, especially on mobile devices; but from a usability standpoint, are these affective at drawing in users? Do users take the time to view these? Are they annoyed at always having to scroll down to see if there is anything else useful on the homepage? I think they are like the splash pages of the past: poor for usability and SEO.

I've advised to at least make sure that the images are sized so the top of the page fits any screen (some of them do resize well for mobile devices, but maybe not laptops/desktops), include text with calls to action and click through to relevant content.

I've been noting that they aren't media businesses selling images or videos, so they need to get their offerings to the top of the page so that users can see and engage more quickly.

Anyone have any stats or experience on this?

Thanks, Ann

I just did SEO audits of approx 50 websites  in the tourism sector. Nearly all had poor Google Pagespeed ratings, partly down to that,  among other factors. I also feel that slideshows,, large images and videos in headers are poor for usability. I say get the content people need to engage with in front of them asap  Are there any stats or studies that can provide insight on this? I've been  telling those with these designs to  keep an eye on bounce rates and let that guide them

Still an issue!

Still an issue!