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What’s the point of this post? You should be confused, and for good reason. There’s no consistency, the content has to be read separately, and who knows if you even stuck around long enough for the last choice (I hope you’re still reading!).
Many credit unions do something just like this every day. It’s called the rotating banner, and it needs to go.
One can compare a rotating banner on a homepage with changing billboards along the highway. It seems fair, right? Only the billboard is showing content to thousands of people a day, and each panel gets equal time. Imagine if that same billboard showed the same image to every driver for the first 5 seconds, yet they passed it in 15. What if your institution paid to be 4th in rotation? You wouldn’t be too happy, would you?
It’s the same on your website. If you’re lucky, a web visitor will give 10 seconds to decide if a page is worth their time (and given this data is from 2011, it’s almost certain the number has only gone down).
Assuming your site has a rotating banner set to 5 seconds, visitors will see (at most) two graphics. I’ve seen sites with 7, 8, even 10 rotating graphics! It would take a full minute to flow through each of these in succession. I’m sorry to say, but none of your members are spending that much time on your homepage.
On the web, goals must be defined quickly and clearly to have any success. The primary banner on your site must direct to the primary marketing goal at that moment. For the rest, you can have secondary areas and a clear menu structure.
You may notice retail companies “breaking” this rule, however, their visitors are potential customers browsing a product lineup. A commitment to remaining for a longer time is already set (i.e. They did not come for an unrelated purpose, then become distracted to stay much longer). Companies like Apple and Microsoft (I use products/services from both) highlight this strategy.
We love seeing credit unions build success on new initiatives. It’s just disappointing when their results are compromised by burying a call to action behind today’s latest graphic. In fact, for our own partners, we can trace web hit falloff to moving a banner back from the first in a rotation.
Members hitting your website are opportunities. Engage them quickly and efficiently and they will reward you with additional services.
PS – The featured image is deliberately bad. It expresses the problem with trying to show a bunch of things in the same space. Nothing is to scale, there’s unrealistic lines, and it’s actively making stellar understanding worse. Sadly, few of you made it here to learn this.
Disclosure: Credit unions partnered with my firm may use rotating banners. If practices improved, our own services may be better promoted, resulting in a financial gain for both parties.