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I'm loving Carousels - how do others feel

Google likes to use them too

         

NickMNS

8:37 pm on Jan 24, 2018 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Back in December there was post here about Google expanding rich snippets and knowledge graphs.
[webmasterworld.com...]

The thing that struck me most about the screen shots that were shared was Google's extensive use of Carousels to present content in the mobile serps. Images, Videos, more content... This struck me as a brilliant UX feature for small screens, you can present a lot of content with very limited screen space that users are very likely to interact with. Show one card, then peak the next one. Who can resist seeing whats behind the screen?

Since that post I have begun implementing Carousels in my new page designs.
Tab content => replaced by a carousel of the content
List of links => replaced by a carousel of the links with a preview of the linked content
A horizontal button group, that on mobile becomes grouped vertical => replaced by carousel of buttons

All the content is findable by the users so nothing is "hidden" as in tabbed or show more content.

Basically I'm in love with carousels. But who cares what I think! What do other think of carousels?

Do carousels fall into the same category as infinite-scroll, loved by devs hated by users?

How much is too much? I'm thinking of creating where all the content is a carousel, four in total. Only the ads would be static.

Oh yes! Ads... Put an ad below a carousel, the ad becomes sticky, but its not.

martinibuster

9:35 pm on Jan 24, 2018 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I agree, carousels are an interesting alternative for site navigation.

Amazon used to have carousel ads that did really well for me. Unfortunately they're not available anymore. If they are then they're doing a good job of hiding it!

keyplyr

10:11 am on Jan 25, 2018 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



... a brilliant UX feature for small screens
I have a dozen pages using horizontal expanding responsive displays. Same idea, but not that irritating spin.

NickMNS

7:44 pm on Feb 4, 2018 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



@keyplyr I'm referring to the same thing, no slide show or spin. Just the ability to swipe the content horizontal on mobile.

I have a more specific question on this topic. I have one of these carousels at the bottom of my page where I show links to similar content. I now have two cards one with type "A" links the other with Type "B" links. Each card shows 10 links (top 10) but there are often more links. So I was thinking of adding a show more button at the bottom of the card. My idea was to spawn a new card for each show more click. So I would have card "Type A" and "Type B". Then if a user click show more on the "Type A" card a new card would be added such that you have "Type A", "Type A show More", "Type B".
Would this be confusing?
How else could one show more?
going to a new page for just "show more" links seems to me like a bad idea as there is no real content just a page of links. Expanding the card vertically seems odd as well given that the "Type B" card would remain with its initial height, so a side swipe would make the card disappear.

Any thoughts on this would be welcome.

keyplyr

7:53 pm on Feb 4, 2018 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Beyond the utilitarian issue is the more important consideration of... does this benefit the user.

Does this tool give them access to more on-topic content, or just links to more pages that may or may not be specifically related?

lucy24

8:11 pm on Feb 4, 2018 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Can the user interact with the carousel? Is there a transparent way to get back to the-picture-before-last--the one that scrolled offscreen when the cat stepped on the keyboard--or do you have to sit with your eyes glued to the screen waiting for the desired picture--with its associated links--to reappear?

NickMNS

1:12 am on Feb 5, 2018 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



@Keyplyr
does this benefit the user.

Yes and no.
First let me be a bit more specific, the links are for similar items. An example would be car brands like so the page is about Mazda and the similar links would be "Toyota, Nissan, Honda ...." . I assume that most users may not care, but the ten links show some similar items(there is far more diversity in the actual content than there is in car brands) . For a user looking for "ideas", the similar items maybe in fact be useful and inspiring, and that user would benefit from more links. The linked pages are the same as the initial page, so the Mazda page might show sales for the last 10 years, number of models, cars sold per model etc... The Toyota page would repeat that but for Toyota.

I also intend on creating a comparison engine that would allow the user to compare the current item to the similar one, directly from these links.

@lucy24
Can the user interact with the carousel?

Yes very intuitively, on mobile by swiping left or right and on desktop by clicking on the next card, arrow buttons or using the keyboard arrow. I'm also thinking that I should add a "x" in the top left corner to allow the user to close the newly spawned card.

Just to be clear each new card can in turn spawn another card provided that there are links in the DB. Each entity typically has 10 to 100 hundred similar entities associated with it.

keyplyr

1:43 am on Feb 5, 2018 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Sounds like a nice feature the way you describe it.

I'm seeing more carousels lately and it seems an especially good fit for mobile.