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Homepage Hero Banner Slides?

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Ryan Everson

Ryan Everson

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Mar 21, 2012
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#1
Thought I would throw this question out there to see what the DealerRefresh community thinks - Do customers even look at hero banner sliders on homepages?

As you guys probably also experience, our manufacturer reps constantly hound us on making sure we have 5-10 sliders on the homepage promoting this month's deals. In my opinion the majority of customers have banner ad blindness and breeze right past the homepage and into the search results.

I tested my theory using UTM codes and found less than 2% of visitors clicked on our banners, with 1% clicking on the first slide and then the remaining 5 slides receiving the fraction of a percent.

Personally someone seeing the offer and it making an impression on them to take action later is more important to me than a direct click on the banner so I used a hotjar heatmap to see where people's cursors went because cursors can be an indicator of where someone's eyes may be looking but the hero slider area was cold with most of the heat on the navigation and search bar.

The other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of website vendors disable the hero banner slider on mobile so ~60% of our traffic won't even see the banners. If the website vendor does show the banner slider on mobile can customers even make out what the image says since it was created with the desktop user in mind?

So why do we spend all of this time creating hero banners and taking up valuable homepage real estate if it seems no one is clicking or looking at them?

I think this quote from http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ sums it up well:
"Carousels are effective at being able to tell people in Marketing/Senior Management that their latest idea is on the Home Page. Use them to put content that users will ignore on your Home Page. Or, if you prefer, don’t use them. Ever."

Of course it's still important to promote these limited time sales but I think there are better ways and places of doing so. For example creating relevant banners that show up at the top of vehicle search results pages dynamically based on what vehicles they are searching for.

What do you guys think?
 
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#2
As for clicks, carousels are ineffective. I tend to agree that if they get noticed without the clicks, it can be effective. That might be a little bit harder to test. On the other hand, I think if they were actually interested, they would click on it.

It might be worth to try something else and compare the results.
 
#3
We track clicks on all sliders across all sites because this question is both common and welcomed.
The first and 2nd slider tend to get clicks, sometimes the 3rd gets some. Beyond that you've got a dedicated customer.

That said, the common solution tends to be homepage video backgrounds. Those convert less than anything because there's no engagement, it's just "look and feel".

I much prefer a "show all your cards at once" approach.

Screen Shot 2017-03-27 at 9.37.15 AM.png
 
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#6
craigh said:
Like dedicating an entire slide to 1 vehicle with 1 purchasing option and 1 call to action?
I'm hard pressed to believe that sells more of that car at the dealership website's part of the purchase process.
Click to expand...

"This ain't a bus stop" is what one of my first managers used to say when none of us were upping the latest walk-in. Even though that customer wasn't interacting with someone right away that person didn't walk back to her car and drive off. People who go to dealerships, car shopping, have made a much more serious commitment than those who go to say Best Buy. They're on a mission. Same goes for car shoppers on dealer websites.

People seeking service....that's a whole 'nother story. And there are a whole lot more of them!

My point & question is: are you making relevant banner ads at all ;)
 
#7
Alex Snyder said:
The issue isn't ad blindness, it is irrelevant messages. I click on homepage banners all the time....when they're relevant to my visit.
Click to expand...
Exactly, but how do you make the 1st slide relevant to the thousands of visitors that land on your homepage?

It's difficult to do even with some of the website vendors' half baked personalization options. The other issue is some manufacturers force feed in their own slides and we can't move our slides in front of theirs.

What we've been doing now is making the first homepage slide the overarching manufacturer theme ie: March Madness Sale - Savings up to $11,431 and Leases as Low as $159 /mo. Then once they start searching inventory, serve up dynamic relevant banners at the top of the SRP based on the vehicles they are viewing. ie: Chevrolet Impala March Madness Sale - Savings up to $5,624 and Leases as Low as $189 /mo.

If we were to serve that Impala banner up on the homepage it would only be relevant to the small percentage of people who are in the market for a sedan / Impala. So serving it up dynamically on the SRP allows us to show the most relevant messaging.

Manufacturer reps don't really care about the "relevance" though and just grade us simply on the volume of homepage slides which of course our data shows that slides past the first one or two get 0 traction.
 
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#8
Our heat-maps show zero activity on the carousel and all I can do is SMH when I walk into work each morning, check our site and see what kind of ridiculous new banner the factory rocket surgeons loaded up there the night before. Can't wait for our DI site to go live with no banners at all...
 
#9
Agree that hero banners don't work, we test it all the time. but must also agree with @Alex Snyder that they don't work not because of their nature but because of the message that we put.

We continue to add offers equal to those of every other dealership, and the consumer knows it. Do we think that our $199/month lease is anything unique to hurry up to get?

Put a banner with a car at half price, half of the real price, for 1 (uno) day, be ready to deal with the heat. People will come out of the woodwork to buy that car well after you replace the banner with a new one saying that it has been sold.
 
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#10
If you or your website platform provider are not testing for usability and conversion rates (on some level), then you're doing it wrong. I would argue it's all about your messaging and format.

Loads of discussion on this stuff out there:
etc., etc., etc.
 
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