Don’t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels
conversionxl.com
conversionxl.com
I'm not saying he is necessarily wrong, but this is an extremely broad generalization that is not backed up with any evidence in the post itself.
The image slider is a classic example of user interface being built without being designed around purpose and function. This is a shitty design paradigm that has somehow lasted for years and years, but there will always be trendy things to do that are extended past their original purpose.
Start with purpose, then design a user interface that meshes with those goals, and good things will happen.
Normal users would go to the site to use it for the purpose of finding some bit of information; instead, in this case, another person loads it up on their laptop or projector for the stakeholder and talks about "hey, look what we spent your money on". The stakeholder does not actually touch the computer running the web browser.
(...that's my theory, anyway.)
As someone already said, I'm inclined to agree with the OP. But there needs to be hard data here. People often won't know what to do (I.e. scroll down below the fold) until you flash some hint in front of their eyes. Newspapers used to do usability studies on their print product quite often...and they always found that a huge number of people, no matter how compelling the story, did not turn the page. I can see a case being made that even if there is one big thing you want to get across to the user (such as a bug sale), there are often competing concurrent interests that would be missed below the fold. At least a carousel gives that item/module a fighting chance to be just noticed.
It is generally assumed in interaction design for web that the most instinctive action is scrolling. The concept of there even being a fold is also somewhat misguided, it like turning a page does not apply to a screen.
Take a site like the iOS App Store (yes I know it's technically not a webpage, but same concept)...I go there to search for apps I want. I will almost never scroll down to the bottom because my first instinct is to hit up the search box at the top. In the time that it takes me to type a search in, Apple could show me up to two, maybe 3 featured projects that I otherwise did not know I would be interested in.
Could Apple have trained me to, once I hit the ios App Store front page, to scroll down to check out the list of featured apps and then conduct a search? Sure, but I'm at a loss as to how they could do that without encumbering the user (i.e. putting the search box at the bottom of th epage)
Korg is a perfect example of why you shouldn't use them. All of Korg's product images have been on rotating sliders for years. When I want to take a closer look at how the controls or I/O ports are laid out, the last place I look is korg.com because there is no way to make the damn things stay still.
Good design solves problems. It does not draw attention to itself.
Many other staff members (and customers) also hated the slider and I pointed this out to the relevant parties (Marketing and the MD), but they loved it and so it stayed.
PS: I've just checked and the slider has gone - but the article headers are now in Comic Sans. Dear god!
I'm a fan of this homepage: http://www.curse.com/. It's got slider-like elements, but the content is displayed in a very organized, not distracting fasion. Designing above the fold is nearly irrelevant at this point. If done correctly, the user can easily be encouraged to scroll.
There have been a number of web sites I could not interact with because the carousel swamped my bandwidth with the constantly changing images, when I was accessing a machine remotely.
When that happens, I have no choice but to close the tab and not navigate back to the web site...or visit it later, non-remotely, if I bother going back at all.
On a side note, if you intend to implement a navigation for your slider (like dots or page numbers), I'd highly recommend triggering it on hover and not on click. It's really painful as a user to have to point precisely at a small 8*8 pixel area, stop moving, and then click, in order to change the slide. Hover triggering is more indulgent in terms of precision (like on Chrome's web store). Of course, making the area bigger is also recommended.
Ideally, a slider on mobile should be usable through swiping. It's not hard to setup either.
Starts like this: Wait did that just say "..."? Let me go back
Then I look for thumbnails, then BIG next / prev arrows, then small ones, then little squares in the corner, then those microscopic circles, then if I still can't find it I just inspect the page.