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I hate carousel on websites

Mar 30, 2026 · web design
Author: James

It's just more effort for effectively very little to no result.

1% click-through rate on auto-rotating carousels (Notre Dame study) - and 89% of those clicks go to the first slide only
Users ignore carousels, mistaking them for ads (banner blindness)
Auto-play carousels cause motion/accessibility issues for users without controls to pause/stop the animation
Nielsen Norman Group: carousels are one of the most misused patterns - content after slide 1 is effectively invisible
If it's autoplay without control, users can't read anything before it changes.
And most users never click to see the next slide.
Banner blindness is a real thing too. It looks like an ad, so users ignore it.
It's multiple interactions. Horizontal swipe is competing with vertical scroll.

When it works

  • User-controlled (no auto-play), e.g. product image galleries
  • Low-stakes content where missing a slide doesn't matter
  • Mobile app patterns where swipe is natural and expected (e.g. photo galleries)

**And even when it does work, there is almost always a better way to display the information.

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