Dropping the Image Sliders

Last year I wrote an article about how the trend for image sliders could be costing your conversions: Are Image Sliders Costing you Conversions?

Over the last 12 months we have run a series of split tests on the effectiveness of the image slider on the main ServerTastic website. The results are very interesting.

AB Testing Results

With the image slider in place the average revenue per visitor was $6.68. With the image slider removed the average revenue per visitor was $7.78. Overall Visual Website Optimizer reported the removal of the banner represented a 16.48% improvement with a 79% chance to beat original.

Based on those results the image slider should be removed. However I also tracked the reseller conversions. Those are customers who have signed up for the ServerTastic reseller program. In this case the conversion ratio with the image slider was 1.71% but it fell when the slider was removed to 1.22%. This is a 4% chance to beat original.

More importantly I also track the clicks on the actual images themselves. Over the last 6 months there has been a significant decline in the number of clicks to the point where last month the header clicks dropped to under 1%.

As a result I have removed the image slider from the main page. Instead I am looking at replacing the main page with various different layout styles (time for some more split testing).