Last week we introduced our new Galleria theme for Shopify, which you can purchase from our own store or directly from Shopify.  This week we're going to talk about one of the most exciting features in Galleria, its slideshow.  We believe (and many recent studies agree) that slideshows (sometimes called carousels) are an ineffective way of reaching your audience. 

Conversion XL states that carousels are ineffective and takes the control away from the user.  Returning control to the user is an incredibly important aspect of designing an effective user interface to create a higher conversion rate.  Not only that, but Eryk Runyon found in a study at Notre Dame University that unless you are a news site, you are not going to want to be using a carousel or slideshow.  He found that less than 2% of the sample clicked on the slideshow, and over 70% of those clicks came on the first image.  Anything after the first image on a slideshow appears is lost to the user.  This is a troubling fact considering how important the content in a slideshow is to the web author.

These are just a couple of the reasons that we decided to create a a unique column slideshow that works through user interaction.  Check out this gif below:

Each movement on this carousel is created by the user mousing over one of the three elements on the page.  This is included with every purchase of our Galleria theme.  By increasing user interaction we believe that you will be able to engage more users than ever before on some of your site's most prime real estate.

By offering an interaction you're more likely to have a user click on each slide.  Changing the image will keep your customers engaged, and we think that any increase in interaction with a slideshow/carousel will result in higher sales, conversions, and more return customers.

There is still a slideshow included in Galleria for those who still prefer to use them (and there are effective uses if you're running a lot of blogs or news content).  We've also included a hero video banner for the same space.  Our goal with Galleria is to help you create the best e-commerce website available.  We will try and help you every step of the way.