The Function of a Gallery on a Website

Gallery, slider, rotator — whatever you call them, the boxes that show a series of pictures at the top of a web page have become very popular. Are you thinking of getting one for your website?

We’re working on a website redesign for a business services company, in partnership with Haden Interactive, where this question came up. The company’s old site had a rotating banner and they decided they didn’t like it. “It takes up a lot of real estate,” the CEO told us. “Maybe we’d be better off with something else.”

In fact, the slider on their site had poorly designed slides, with images that didn’t really represent the company and text that didn’t have the focus it needed. A messy assortment of fonts and styles kept visitors from paying attention to the gallery, and it was in fact taking up a lot of space without paying its rent in customer appeal or SEO benefits.

The gallery on this page, from our client Mintahoe Catering and Events, shows how it ought to be done. The slides are high-quality photos, there’s plenty of content to let the search engines know what the page is about, and the whole design works together to create the effect the website owners want.

We showed our business services company CEO some galleries that work well, like this one, and he agreed. “I like the rotator when it’s done right,” he decided.

If you’re thinking about a gallery for your website, contact us to talk about how to make it a valuable part of your site, not wasted space.