Presenting Content One Slide at a Time
By John Dimm
Users visit your Web site ready to invest a finite amount of time and effort. In return, they expect to see an article they want to read, find a product they want to buy, or just be entertained. Your job is to make sure something interesting happens before they run out of patience. Once something grabs their interest, you have to make sure the item either holds it, or grabs it again at regular intervals. If you don't, visitors will be gone.
This may seem obvious, but few sites employ solid methods for keeping visitors around. One way to create a satisfying user experience is to present your information in a compelling and entertaining way. If you already do that—congratulations! You've got it made, and you don't need any help. If not, you probably know how hard it is to present great content in an interesting way, and you've come to the right place.
The key to improving user experience is to require less effort for more payoff. In other words, users will spend more time at your site if you reduce the amount of work it takes to see your content.
We Like to Watch
One way to give Web visitors more for their time is with a slide show. In the old days, you sat in a dark living room and watched projections on the wall while your host changed the slides and talked about his family vacation. The difference with the Web is that your visitors can choose which set of slides they want to see and regulate the pace at which the slides appear (without having to listen to the neighbor's droll commentary).
