Articles in Responsive Tag — Blog — Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin Extending the world of WordPress and Joomla. Take your website to the next level with our plugins. Download Smart Slider 3 today and get started building beautiful sliders with confidence using our advanced editor. Wed, 03 Jan 2024 14:09:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 2024’s Biggest WordPress Design Trends to Follow https://smartslider3.com/blog/biggest-wordpress-design-trends/ Wed, 03 Jan 2024 06:00:02 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=51811 Staying current with the latest trends is critical for website owners and designers in the ever-evolving world of web design. Keeping your website fresh and modern can help attract new visitors and keep existing ones engaged. It is essential to keep ahead of the competition by recognizing and adopting the current design trends in your […]

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Staying current with the latest trends is critical for website owners and designers in the ever-evolving world of web design. Keeping your website fresh and modern can help attract new visitors and keep existing ones engaged. It is essential to keep ahead of the competition by recognizing and adopting the current design trends in your website.

In this post, we’ll cover some of the major WordPress design trends to follow in 2024 and how you can execute them using Smart Slider 3. We’ll talk about the trends that are defining the digital landscape this year, ranging from responsive design to minimalist layouts and typography.

Additionally, we’ll introduce you to Smart Slider 3’s templates and interface, a handy tool that can aid you to construct attractive and trendy sliders that are guaranteed to make an impact. So, whether you’re a website owner or a designer, keep reading to learn more about the current design trends for 2024!

📚 Table of contents

1.📱Responsive Design
2.✏️Minimalism
3.🎓Typography
4.Animation
5.💻Call-to-Action (CTA)
6.💡Conclusion

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Responsive Design

As more and more people are accessing the internet on their mobile phones and the number is continuously growing, responsive design has become a necessity rather than a trend. This year it is more important than ever to create websites that are optimized for different screen sizes. Responsive design allows pages to adapt to different devices, making it easy for users to navigate and interact with the content.

Some of the primary benefits of responsive design are improved user experience, larger mobile traffic, and higher search engine results. Visitors are more likely to engage with content and stay on a website that is optimized for mobile devices. Also, Google and other search engines favor mobile-friendly websites in their search rankings, so integrating responsive design can aid in increasing your website’s visibility and attracting more traffic.

Smart Slider responsive layout

WordPress’s unique plugin, Smart Slider, makes it easy and simple to create a website that looks great on any screen size. Our huge template library aids you with pre-designed templates that you can choose from offering one of the best resources for responsive design. These templates are also fully customizable allowing you to adjust the slider design to your specific requirements. But that’s not all, to make it even more affordable for website owners and designers, we offer several free versions of our unique templates.

Therefore, creating a website with responsive design is not even hard, you just need to be provided with the right tools to do it. Just like with Smart Slider, you can simply use a template or you can fully customize your own. With the pre-made templates and responsive design tools Smart Slider’s interface lets you create a website that looks great on any device. In addition, there’s no need to worry because it doesn’t require any extensive coding skills.

Check out the template library and decide for yourself. Start creating your own mobile-friendly website now.

Minimalism

For some years, minimalism has been a trendy design style, and it shows no signs of disappearing in 2024. The use of simple, clean elements to produce a sleek and modern aesthetic is the main point of minimalist design. This approach is particularly beneficial for websites that wish to exude sophistication and professionalism.

Focusing only on the essentials is the secret to great minimalist design. Therefore, it’s critical to apply a limited color palette, basic patterns, and clear typography. White space is also an important part of minimalist design since it contributes to a sense of serenity and spaciousness.

Advertising Agency business template
Live Preview

One advantage of minimalist design is that it makes your website more user-friendly. Users can focus on the information and browse the site more quickly if the distractions are removed. Minimalist design can also help your website load faster improving user experience and SEO.

Smart Slider’s templates come in a variety of minimalist designs. From simple text and image sliders to more advanced designs, you can create a clean and modern website. Furthermore, with our customizable templates, you can truly make it your own by adding your personal touches to the design.

Photo story template
Live Preview

Make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site by creating a sleek and modern page. Head over to Smart Slider’s template library to find numerous unique templates.

Typography

Typography plays an increasingly large part in website design in 2024. Many designers experiment with a larger selection of typefaces and styles thanks to the rise of high-resolution screens and improved font rendering technologies. As a result, typography may now be employed as a powerful design element as well as a practical one.

The usage of a huge, strong font is one design element we can see more of in 2024. This is a powerful tool for drawing attention to key headlines or messages. Serif typefaces are also gaining popularity because they provide a sense of sophistication and beauty.

Furthermore, custom fonts are becoming more accessible allowing designers to build their own distinctive typefaces that reflect the character of their company. However, it’s important to keep in mind that by implementing these unique fonts into your slides, there’s a possibility that their appearances will vary from the original.

I will show you an example of an outstanding hand-drawn font which is an emerging trend among designers as well. Its artistic look and resemblance to natural handwriting, allow you to add a personal touch to your design. These types of fonts are best used for headings or as decorative elements.

Bakery template
Live Preview

It is critical to take readability and accessibility into consideration when selecting typefaces for your website. Strong fonts may be eye-catching but they don’t seem to be the best choice for body text. Sans-serif fonts are neater and should be used for longer pieces of text. Also, it can’t be dismissed to make certain that your font choices are accessible to users with visual impairments. Therefore it’s essential to test your designs using tools like color contrast checkers and screen readers.

The typographic possibilities in Smart Slider’s designs range from slick and futuristic to more classic and neat. You can experiment with different font choices and styles with our customizable templates to discover the right match for your website.

It’s also worth mentioning that highlighting a text or putting an animation on it is turning out to be a great new trend as well. These typewriter effects or highlighted headings are very useful in case you want to emphasize an important part of your content. In addition, animations are great tools for bringing your website to life.

Cooking Slider highlighting text
Live Preview

Animation

In web design, animation is a great, effective technique, and we see even more implementations of it in 2024. Animations can add depth and variety to your website, from subtle animations that improve the user experience to fearless, attention-grabbing effects.

Movie slider with unique animations
Live Preview

Micro-animations are very popular this year. These tiny animations can be used to signify interactions, such as when a button is hovered over or clicked. They can also be used to add aesthetics to a page, such as a moving or changing background.

Another emerging trend is the usage of 3D and immersive animations. With the emergence of virtual and augmented reality, designers can now build more immersive user experiences. This type of animation can seem more complex to carry out, however, Smart Slider’s clear interface helps you through each step. So you can easily achieve your desired result without it being overwhelming.

Slider template with 3D animations
Live Preview

Whether you want to apply subtle animations or provoke a mesmerizing feeling, Smart Slider provides you with a variety of different options, from simple text and background animations to more complex layer animations, you have every tool to bring your vision to life.

Layer animations settings

Call-to-Action (CTA)

A call-to-action (CTA) urges visitors to take a certain action, so it’s an important component of any website design. CTAs are even more important in 2024, as companies and website owners seek to boost their conversions and engagement.

The use of tailored CTAs is one thing we see more of in 2024. Personalized CTAs, as opposed to a generic “Sign Up” or “Subscribe” button, can be designed to match the user’s behavior or interests. For example, a visitor who has spent a significant amount of time on a given page may get a CTA that is relevant to the content of that page.

Slider template with personalized CTA
Live Preview

Another emerging trend is interactive CTAs. Interactive CTAs, as opposed to a static button or link, can be more engaging and inspire visitors to take action. It is more eye-catching than a standard button when the CTA changes its color or shape when it’s hovered over.

Slider template with interactive CTA
Live Preview

The possibilities of CTAs in Smart Slider 3 range from simple buttons to interactive and customizable CTAs. You can experiment with different layouts and styles to discover the best match for your website with the use of our customizable templates.

Ready to put Smart Slider 3 to the test and improve your call-to-action game? Visit the template library for some inspiration and start building a website with effective CTAs today!

Conclusion

In conclusion, the main concepts of WordPress’s design trends in 2024 are based on accessibility, unique design, and increased engagement. Smart Slider 3 is a WordPress plugin that enables website owners and designers to make gorgeous and mobile-friendly websites by giving access to a large template library and an easy-to-use interface that offers a variety of customizable opportunities.

We all know that applying trends to develop a modern website can be a fantastic idea, but keep in mind that they change all the time. You should also be paying attention to your content and SEO to stay relevant. Users will stay on your page if it is fascinating to them, but search engines will only find you if you have great content to offer. Utilizing animations and effects might catch the attention of your visitors, but no one should overdo it.

All in all, you can create without any doubt a better user experience, engage more visitors and stay ahead of your competition in the ever-changing digital world by leveraging these trends, ideas, and tools.

The post 2024’s Biggest WordPress Design Trends to Follow appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> 10+ FAQs on WordPress Sliders: Everything You Need to Know https://smartslider3.com/blog/10-faqs-on-wordpress-sliders-everything-you-need-to-know/ Thu, 06 Jul 2023 09:17:20 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=52919 We’re thrilled to delve into the world of WordPress sliders! They can be a game-changer if you want to boost your website with dynamic content. Additionally, we’ll address the most frequently asked questions regarding WordPress sliders giving you the information you need to make wise choices. However, there’s still more! We have you covered whether […]

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We’re thrilled to delve into the world of WordPress sliders! They can be a game-changer if you want to boost your website with dynamic content. Additionally, we’ll address the most frequently asked questions regarding WordPress sliders giving you the information you need to make wise choices.

However, there’s still more! We have you covered whether you are an inexperienced or a seasoned user. This article will support you with the necessary information to get the most out of WordPress sliders, from understanding the basics of sliders to improving their performance and customization. So let’s get started and look at the solutions to your most pressing questions concerning WordPress sliders.

📚 Table of contents

What is a WordPress Slider?
Should I Use Sliders On My Website?
Do Sliders Negatively Affect SEO?
Do Sliders Make Websites Slow?
What is the Easiest WordPress Slider?
What is the Best Free Slider for WordPress?
How Do I Create a Slider in WordPress?
What Size Should Slider Images Be in WordPress?
How Do I Make a Full-Width Slider in WordPress?
How Do I Make a Slider Autoplay in WordPress?
How Do I Make a Responsive Slider in WordPress?
How Do I Create a Post Slider?
How Do I Make a Slider in Elementor?
How Do I Create a Product Slider in WordPress?
Conclusion

What is a WordPress Slider?

Are you brand new to the WordPress slider community? We’ve got you, so don’t worry!

WordPress sliders, sometimes referred to as carousels or slideshows, are dynamic elements of a website that can present a variety of content, including media content in a slideshow format. It often takes up a primary spot on the homepage, drawing the users’ attention, while exhibiting its content in a visually appealing and engaging way.

Full page hotel slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

What is the Purpose of a Slider?

A WordPress slider’s main goal is to captivate visitors and offer them an alluring experience. Sliders are frequently used to:

    • Showcase portfolio items

Showcase portfolio slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

 

    • Make significant announcements

Bonsai slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

 

    • Highlight featured products

Product category carousel slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

 

    • Display client testimonials

Testimonial carousel slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

They provide a dynamic and interactive feature that can improve the aesthetics and usability of your website. You can efficiently share information, pique your visitor’s interest, and advertise certain content or services by using a slider. Visitors can navigate among all types of content without overcrowding the page with material thanks to sliders. They help you display many bits of content in a limited space.

Should I Use Sliders On My Website?

You could be weighing whether you should add a WordPress slider to your website, now that we have a better understanding of what they are. Sliders can be intriguing, but it’s important to take into consideration the benefits and drawbacks before choosing one.

What are the Benefits of Using a Slider?

  • Visual Appeal: Slider’s eye-catching content can quickly capture users’ attention and help establish a lasting first impression.
  • Highlight Multiple Content: Sliders make it simple for visitors to browse through a variety of options by allowing you to display different pieces of content or products in a small space.
  • Promotional Opportunities: Sliders are a great way to draw attention to special deals, brand-new items, or significant announcements.
  • Enchanted User Experience: Including interactive sliders in your website, adds a visually appealing and dynamic outlook, additionally enhancing the overall user experience.

What are the Disadvantages of Using a Slider?

  • User Distraction: Sliders that change slides automatically can divert users’ attention away from the primary message or call-to-action, which might have an impact on their focus and engagement. So in this case make sure to always allow the visitor to stop the autoplay on demand.
  • Page Load: Sliders with huge image files can slow down page loads and degrade the user experience. We’ll explore this concept more later on and give you tips on how to avoid it.
  • Accessibility Problems: Many users choose not to follow the useful recommendations given to make their sliders accessible. This causes it to have accessibility problems. So they either choose to drop the slider or just simply not make their website accessible.

Think of your website’s unique goals, target audience, and content before employing sliders. Sliders are a very useful tool if you have eye-catching visuals or a variety of products to highlight. However, firstly you should always consider the needs and goals of it for a moment.

Do Sliders Negatively Affect SEO?

It makes sense that you are wondering whether WordPress sliders are affecting SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Let’s answer some typical concerns and clarify the connection between sliders and SEO.

  • Content Accessibility: A possible risk is search engines’ ability to correctly index and comprehend the content within sliders. It’s crucial to make sure the text content within a slider is crawlable. For improved accessibility, use a slider plugin that enables you to add alt text to your images, and lets you structure your content with different H tags. However, a good slider plugin also offers the opportunity to add text as paragraphs as well. In addition, your slider should have a good HTML structure.

Structured text for SEO in Smart Slider

 

  • Page Load Times: A key element of SEO is how quickly your page loads. You must optimize your slider to prevent them from negatively affecting the speed of the entire website. Use effective image compression methods, reduce the picture sizes, and if your slider plugin supports it, activate lazy loading. Additionally, pick a performance-focused slider plugin, like Smart Slider 3, that’s lightweight and well-coded.
  • Mobile Responsiveness: Search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites because they offer a better user experience. So make sure the slider plugin you use has choices for responsive design, and test your sliders on a variety of devices to make sure they appear correctly.
  • User Engagement: Although not directly associated with sliders, user engagement metrics, like click-through rates, time on page, and bounce rates can nonetheless have an indirect influence on the SEO of your website. These can be positively impacted by engaging sliders that grab users’ attention and promote interaction. They can even inform search engines that your content is important and relevant.

Don’t let SEO concerns stop you from including sliders on your website. You can have a positive effect on your SEO efforts by implementing the best practices for accessibility, performance optimization, mobile friendliness, and unique content. Additionally, make sure to choose a slider plugin that has all the above-mentioned options for better accessibility.

Do Sliders Make Websites Slow?

The possible impact on website performance while utilizing WordPress sliders is a common concern. Let’s explore this and learn more about how to include sliders into your website with the best performance possible.

  • Image Optimization: Images in sliders are commonly the main cause of longer page loads. To avoid this issue, optimize your slider images by resizing them and compressing them.

Smart Slider 3 optimization settings

 

  • Lazy Loading: Implementing lazy loading for your slider can greatly enhance the functionality of your website. It allows for faster initial page loads by only loading images within the slider when they enter the users’ viewport. Lazy loading features are included in several slider plugins, including Smart Slider 3.
  • Reduce Animations and Effects: Although animations and transition effects can improve the aesthetic attractiveness of your sliders, too many or complex animations can have an adverse effect on the speed of your website. To ensure seamless and quick transitions on and between the slides choose animations that are lighter and simpler.
  • Performance-Optimized Slider Plugin: Select a slider plugin that has been optimized for performance, because not all slider plugins are made equally in terms of speed. Choose a performance-optimized, lightweight, and well-coded plugin, like Smart Slider 3. Such plugins are created with the intention of prioritizing speed and reducing resource usage without sacrificing functionality.

Remember, optimizing numerous features, including sliders, contributes to the overall performance of your website. Utilize tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to continuously evaluate the performance of your website and spot areas for development.

Don’t let your fear of website slowdown stop you from utilizing sliders to their full potential. You can profit from sliders without losing website speed by adopting optimization strategies like image optimization, lazy loading, and starting to use a performance-focused plugin, like Smart Slider 3.

What is the Easiest WordPress Slider?

Finding the easiest WordPress slider plugin will save you time and trouble, whether you’re new to WordPress or just searching for a user-friendly slider solution. Fortunately, there are some out there that put emphasis on simplicity without sacrificing functionality.

Smart Sldier 3 stands out as a superb option in terms of usability. It has a very user-friendly and straightforward interface, making it available to users of all skill levels. Without coding experience or other technical skills, you can easily design and edit sliders using its drag-and-drop builder.

With real-time previews, Smart Slider 3 offers a fluid editing process so you can see your changes right away. The user-friendly interface makes it easy to add and arrange slides, edit animations, include multimedia elements, and choose transition effects. To kickstart your slider-making process, you can also use the side library and the pre-designed templates.

Additionally, you can easily include sliders in your current website design, thanks to Smart Slider 3’s compatibility with well-known page builders like Elementor, Divi, Brizy, WPBAkery, and Avada Builder.

What is the Best Free Slider for WordPress?

You’ll be happy to know that there are several impressive solutions if you are looking for a free slider plugin for your WordPress website. However, Smart Sldier 3 stands out as a strong free slider plugin among them. It provides an astonishing amount of functions and customization options without charging you a thing.

Here’s why it’s on the top of the free slider plugins for WordPress:

  1. Feature-rich: Smart Slider 3 offers a wide range of features equivalent to those found in premium slider plugins. You can get access to:
    • 5 different layers types and default and absolute position them
    • Image optimization
    • Page builder support
    • Dynamic content
    • Adjustable controls of your slider
    • 9 smooth background animations with customization options
  2. Intuitive Interface: Smart Slider 3’s design makes it simple for both beginner and experienced users to build sliders with ease. You can easily organize slides and other layers using the drag-and-drop builder, and the real-time preview lets you watch the changes take effect as you edit your sliders.
  3. Responsiveness: A slider must be responsive and mobile-friendly in order to function properly, given the growing popularity of mobile usage. Your sliders will be entirely responsive and mobile-friendly thanks to Smart Slider 3. It ensures the best viewing experience on a variety of screen sizes.
  4. Template Library: Smart Slider 3 offers a variety of pre-designed templates to get you started with creating sliders. You can save time and work by using one of these templates, which provides a number of aesthetics for different sectors.
  5. Compatibility: As it was already mentioned above, Smart Slider 3 works in perfect harmony with well-known page builders. Because of this, you can build your website using sliders without worrying about compatibility difficulties or conflicts.

Create engaging sliders without going overboard with your money to improve your website’s aesthetics and user engagement.

The new way to build a Slider
Next generation visual editor, customizable animations & effects, and access to hundreads of premade templates.
Get Started
Smart Slider 3 - The new way to build a Slider

How Do I Create a Slider in WordPress?

With the help of the Smart Slider 3 plugin, WordPress makes it simple to create siders. Let’s go through the detailed instructions to get you started creating your own slider:

  • Step 1: Install and Activate Smart Slider 3
    Go to “Plugins” in your WordPress dashboard and select “Add New”.
    Find “Smart Slider 3 “ by searching for it, then click “Install Now” next to the plugin.
    Once the plugin has been installed, click “Activate”.

Installing Smart Slider 3

 

  • Step 2: Access Smart Slider 3
    Now, the WordPress sidebar has added the Smart Sldier 3 menu. To access the plugin’s dashboard click on it.

Smart Slider 3 in the sidebar menu of WordPress

 

  • Step 3: Create a New Slider
    Click the “New Project” button on the Smart Slider 3 dashboard.
    Choose whether you want to start from scratch or use a template.
    If you choose to build your own, then select the slider type you would like to use (block, simple slider, carousel, or showcase).

Selecting slider type in Smart Slider 3

 

  • Step 4: Customize your Slider
    You can add and arrange your slides. To add slides select the “Add Slide” button. Add content on each slide, change the settings, and add animations and effects as desired.
  • Step 5: Configure Slider Settings
    On the Slider settings page, you can adjust and customize your slider wholly like, autoplay, animation, and controls. In addition, based on the layout of your website, modify the slider.
  • Step 6: Publish the Slider
    Click the “Save” button when you are done with customizing the slider.
    There are different publishing possibilities available in Smart Slider 3. You can choose to embed the slider using a shortcode or a widget, or directly insert it into a page or post using the Gutenberg editor or page builder.
  • Step 7: Check and Verify
    To make sure that your slider displays and operates as intended, preview it.
    To guarantee responsiveness and the best possible user experience, test your slider on a variety of screen sizes.

What Size Should Slider Images Be in WordPress?

Choosing the right size for your WordPress sliders’ images is essential, to ensure that they blend smoothly into the style of your website and offer the best viewing experience to your visitors.

Let’s look at some recommendations that can help you in choosing the right size for your sliders:

  • Aspect Ratio: It is advised to match the slider’s aspect ratio to your website’s general layout and appearance. Choose an aspect ratio that works with the dimensions of your website’s content space.
  • Proper Images: The size of the images should match the slider they are placed in. So don’t attempt to fit a 3000 px wide image within a 1200 px wide slider. The same goes for putting smaller images in bigger sliders.
  • Full Width, Boxed, and Full Page: Choose whether you want your slider to be contained within a certain content area (boxed), cover the entire width of the browser window (full width), or fill in the browser’s width and height (full page). While the boxed layout can provide a more focused and under-control display, the other two can produce an experience that is more visually striking.
  • Responsive Desing: Your slider must be capable of adjusting to various screen sizes. Therefore, select a slider plugin with responsive design choices, such as Smart Slider 3.
  • Page Load Times: Even though they are aesthetically pleasing, sliders that require huge image files can considerably slow down page loads. Maintaining the balance between aesthetic appeal and performance is important. If you can, use jpg photos rather than png ones since they load more quickly. A nice slider image should not exceed 500 kb in size.
  • Testing and Previewing: To make sure that your sliders are displayed as intended across various devices, it’s crucial to preview them. It’s important to ensure that your sliders adapt properly and maintain their aesthetic appeal.

How Do I Get an Image to Fit a Screen?

You can select how an image will fit the screen when you set it as a background image. You can choose one of five fill modes in Smart Slider 3, for each of your slides. Let’s check out how they work!

  • Fill: This is the default option. If necessary, it crops the images so that it fits the whole slider.
  • Fit: The entire image is seen, without cropping. The areas where the image can’t reach the slider are left unfilled.
  • Blur fit: It doesn’t crop the image. However, it also doesn’t leave any blank areas in the slider. Actually, it fills them with the original image’s blurred form.
  • Stretch: Here the image is stretched to fill the slider without being cropped. The visuals frequently become distorted as a result. Use with caution!
  • Center: Contrary to popular perception, this setting won’t center the slider. It only places the background image there in its original size. As a result, this mode loses its responsive behavior.

Check out this video for an example of each mode in action:

How Do I Make a Full-Width Slider in WordPress?

A full-width slider in WordPress enables you to make a visually striking effect by leveraging the complete width of the browser window. Creating a full-width slider is simple with the help of Smart Slider 3. So let’s begin:

  • Step 1: Install and Activate Smart Slider 3
    Follow the instructions mentioned previously in this post to install and activate the Smart Slider 3 plugin, if you haven’t yet.
  • Step 2: Create a New Project
    From the WordPress dashboard select Smart Slider 3. Click on the “New Project” button, then choose the “Full width” layout.Create a full-width layout in Smart Slider 3

 

  • Step 3: Slider Settings
    In the Slider Editor select the Size tab. To make sure the slider fills the complete width of the browser window turn on the “Force Full Width” option. This option forces the slider to go outside of its container and makes it as wide as your screen. However, it has limitations, so it won’t work in every case.
  • Step 4: Customize Your Slides
    Use the “Add Slide” button to add slides to your slider. Then add layers and animations to make it your own. Use the drag-and-drop editor to organize it in a manner you like.
  • Step 5: Additional Settings
    Explore the wide range of settings Smart Slider 3 offers.
  • Step 6: Preview and Test
    Always previous and test before moving on to the publishing process. Ensure your slider looks how you intended it to look. Test its responsiveness, and make adjustments to achieve the best results.
  • Step 7: Publish Your Slider
    After you saved all the changes on your slider, you can publish it in your preferred way by choosing one of the publishing options Smart Slider 3 offers.

How Do I Make a Slider Autoplay in WordPress?

Even in the free version of Smart Slider 3, you can make autoplaying sliders, but the Pro version gives you additional features. Let’s go through each step:

  • Step 1: Choose a Slider
    On the WordPress dashboard locate Smart Slider 3 and select it. To edit the slider, click on the one you would like to add autoplay to.
  • Step 2: Enable Autoplay
    Go to the “Autoplay” tab inside the sider editor, then toggle the “Autoplay” option to enable it.Autoplay settings in Smart Slider 3

 

  • Step 3: Adjust Autoplay Preferences
    Additional options will show up after you enable autoplay. In accordance with your preferences, you can adjust the configuration options.
  • Step 4: Customize Autoplay (Optional)
    Advanced settings are available in Smart Sldier 3 to customize the autoplay further. Explore them, and additionally, you can change the options for controls, pause/play buttons, and indicators.
  • Step 5: Preview and Test
    To check that the slider begins autoplaying in accordance with the selected parameters, preview your slider. In addition, test on various devices and screens.
  • Step 6: Save and Publish
    When you are happy with the autoplay settings, click the “Save” button to keep your modifications. After this, you can publish it in your preferred way.

How Do I Make a Responsive Slider in WordPress?

A responsive slider makes sure that it adapts nicely to all screen sizes and devices, giving your visitors the best possible viewing experience. Luckily, making a responsive slider in WordPress is simple with Smart Slider 3, which is fully responsive. Besides, there are some features you can easily customize before proceeding.

  • Font Sizes: To change the font size of your content just use the Text Scale option. The fact that this is a device-specific setting means that you don’t need to worry about changing the font size on other devices, which is one of the numerous advantages of using it.
  • Hide Layers On Devices: Anybody can experience having their desktop layers look bad on mobile view. With Smart Slider, you can hide whatever layer you want on any device, so there’s no need to worry. Use the “Hide On” feature in the layer window to get to this option. It can be quite beneficial to be able to hide your layers individually.
  • Hide Slides On Devices: If you are using the Pro version, hiding your slides on different devices can be another great option to improve the responsiveness of your sliders.Hide slides on devices in Smart Slider 3
  • Hide Sliders On Devices: Or just simply disable the slider, which will hide everything on the selected device.Hide sliders on devices in Smart Slider 3
  • Controls: Your controls can also be hidden since some of them are simpler to use on desktops but on smaller devices, they seem to be more challenging.Hide controls on devices in Smart Slider 3

How Do I Create a Post Slider?

Making thumbnail sliders for simple navigation is one of Smart Slider 3’s outstanding capabilities. If you want to highlight a number of pages or posts, you can even go one step further and build a WordPress carousel with the help of it.

Carousel slider type in Smart Slider 3

Although there are many great slider plugins available, let me explain why Smart Slider 3 is unique. You have complete control over the design and can easily make a free full-width slider that looks good on all screens. Additionally, it has more functionality than many other groundbreaking slider plugins.

However, there’s still more! The Dynamic Slider feature is a great tool in Smart Slider 3. You can use this tool to build slides from your WordPress posts that update anytime you make changes to the original post itself. So the maintenance will be simple.

You can make as many dynamic slides as you wish. On top of that, you can create a custom post type slider using Smart Slider 3. This offers full access to the featured image, textual content, URL, post title, categories, and tags of your posts. What’s more, you can add custom layers to design and represent these slides as you wish.

Therefore, Smart Slider 3 is the way to go without any doubt, if you are looking for a user-friendly plugin with advanced customization options, that goes above and beyond the essentials. Give it a try and see how beautiful sliders and carousels can make your website come to life.

How Do You Make a Dynamic Slider?

Now we can move on to the actual process of creating a dynamically changing slider. So follow along for this 5-step guide to create your own:

1. Create a Dynamic Slide

You can add a dynamic slide either to an already-created slider or a new one. When you add new content to your source, the slide will automatically update. You should configure the generator and decide how many dynamic slides you want to have in the slider.

Create a dynamic slide in Smart Slider 3

2. Set Up the Generator

There are several sources to pick from. If you have the Pro version of Smart Slider 3, then you can select from 20 sources in WordPress and 27 sources in Joomla to build a post slider from your Joomla articles and WordPress posts.

Dynamic slide sources in Smart Slider 3

3. Create Your Own Slider

You can design your own slider if you want to make one that’s distinctive. Additionally, you can import predefined-slider examples in Smart Slider 3 to use as dynamic slides. Simply copy the layout and paste it into your dynamic slide to complete the task.
You can learn more about how to utilize the demo slider in your generator by reading our documentation.

4. Insert Variable

Set variables if you want your content to change dynamically. Where variables are not used, a static layer will be present.

Insert a variable in Smart Slider 3

5. Publish the Slider

Your slider can now be published, such as a shortcode, or turned into a Gutenberg block. Your slider will also show up on the frontend and automatically refresh.

How Do I Make a Slider in Elementor?

As you may know in Elemnetor you can create simple sliders. However, there are only 3 layers you can add to it: a heading, text, and a button layer. In addition, they have fixed places, so there’s not much room for creativity. This might be the right choice for some websites. But, if you would like to create a more advanced slider where you would like to add additional content, you need to look for a slider plugin that works well with Elementor.

Let’s look at how you can make it happen with Smart Slider 3:

  1. Install and Activate Smart Slider 3
  2. Create a new slider and add slides
  3. Customize each slide to match your own preferences
  4. Create a new page or edit an existing one with Elementor
  5. Drag and drop the Smart Slider 3 widget wherever you would like it to be
  6. Select your slider
  7. Save and Publish

You don’t need to start from scratch, browse the template library to find the most suitable slider for your project.

Smart Slider 3 template library

 

As you can see using Smart Slider 3 with Elementor couldn’t be easier. Just create your preferred slider, add the Smart Slider 3 widget to Elementor, and select the one you’ve created. It’s effortless, time-saving, and fun.

How Do I Create a Product Slider in WordPress?

Smart Slider 3 is a great tool for building special and functional product sliders for your online store in WordPress. In addition, you don’t have to worry about losing mobile visitors, since Smart Slider will take care of it for you.

With this plugin, you are offered a wide range of options for how to effectively display your products. To show your items from various perspectives or highlight their unique features you can add additional image layers. It also helps you with adding specific information about each product using the heading and text layers. Besides, you can design call-to-action buttons that send your visitors to the category or product pages for additional information.

Cosmetics slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

The fact that you can select from the pre-made templates or create your own slider without any coding experience is pretty fantastic. There are no restrictions on how many sliders you can make.

You can draw attention to your top-selling items, or special deals. Moreover, it’s very simple to add a call-to-action button that will persuade visitors to take action. Both the Carousel and Showcase slider types offer beautiful layouts and perfect responsiveness, depending on what your preferences are. In contrast to the Showcase type, the Carousel type maintains the same number of visible slides regardless of the screen size.

In short, if you would like to create captivating product sliders that easily catch the attention of your audience and help you achieve your goals, then give Smart Slider 3 a go.

Engaging Product Slider Examples

Now, let’s look at some stunning examples of different product sliders, to help you get started with your next project.

Product Carousel

Product Carousel slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

To present your products in an engaging and responsive manner, you can utilize the WooCommerce carousel slider. The amazing thing about it is that it shows numerous products slides together, rather than just one slide at a time, which creates an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. The slider and the slide widths are completely adjustable, and you can even decide how many products you would like to show at once. With this fantastic tool, making a responsive carousel is quite simple.

Full-Width Product Carousel

Full Width Product Carousel slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

A really cool slider that’s ideal for presenting your products is the Full-Width Product Carousel. What’s so eye-catching about this is that it introduces some pretty creative concepts, like creating a background with a complementary color to further highlight your items. Additionally, it has space for special slides, including those that advertise offers or encourages your visitors to sign up to your newsletter. They can view several slides at once with this carousel type, allowing them to see more of what you have to offer. It’s an excellent strategy for getting their attention.

Full Page Product Slider

Full Page Top 5 Products slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

You don’t see the Full-page product slider every day, do you? It’s a wonderful idea to create a full-page product slider to make yourself stand out from the competition. With its cool animations and smooth navigation. The Top 5 Product template takes it to the next level. And the best thing, though? You have plenty of room to include product descriptions and give your buyers all the information they need. This strategy is fantastic for getting their attention and leaving a positive impact.

Showcase Product Slider

Winery slider in Smart Slider 3
Live Preview

The Showcase slider type stands out because it shows several slides at once, giving your visitors more to look at. Bet here’s the cool part: by making the main slide larger than the others, it always focuses all the attention on it. The centered slide gets all the attention thanks to this innovative design, while also showcasing the remaining slides. It’s a great technique to draw attention to your content and keep people interested. Try it out to see for yourself!

Conclusion

Congrats! Now you have a firm understanding of WordPress sliders and how they can advance your website. Throughout this post, we’ve answered the most frequently asked questions regarding sliders, including their advantages and effect on SEO as well as their functionality and customizability possibilities.

By utilizing sliders, you can attract users to your WordPress site, highlight key content, and significantly impact your visitors. Sliders offer an effective approach to engaging your audience and successfully delivering your message, regardless of whether you are a blogger, designer, developer, or business owner.

And Smart Slider 3 is the real deal when it comes to selecting the best slider plugin. It’s the most outstanding option for building gorgeous sliders that blend with your website flawlessly. All thanks to its user-friendly interface, rich customization options, and compatibility with well-known page builders.

Why wait then? Utilize Smart Slider 3, and discover the full potential sliders can bring to your website when you make the right choices. Get ready to engage your visitors with aesthetically pleasing sliders.

We hope this post has given you insightful information and useful advice for your adventure with sliders. Feel free to get in touch with us through our support system if you have any additional questions or need assistance. We are here to help you make your sliders shine!

Thank you for joining us on this slider adventure. Stay tuned for more exciting content and helpful tips on WordPress and web design. Happy sliding!

The post 10+ FAQs on WordPress Sliders: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Step-by-Step Guide: Create an Image Carousel in WordPress https://smartslider3.com/blog/step-by-step-guide-create-an-image-carousel-in-wordpress/ Fri, 19 May 2023 08:50:42 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=52395 One of the easiest ways to engage your audience is providing them with dynamic and visually appealing content. Image carousels have become popular as a result of their captivating nature. It allows WordPress websites to showcase their content and message effectively. Are you curious about how to add image carousels to your website? Then keep […]

The post Step-by-Step Guide: Create an Image Carousel in WordPress appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]>
One of the easiest ways to engage your audience is providing them with dynamic and visually appealing content. Image carousels have become popular as a result of their captivating nature. It allows WordPress websites to showcase their content and message effectively. Are you curious about how to add image carousels to your website? Then keep reading.

It doesn’t matter if you are just starting your journey in the WordPress design world or if you have years of experience behind you. This post will aid you with useful tools and the knowledge you’ll need to create your own unique image carousels that without any doubt will boost your website’s popularity. Here’s a step-by-step guide for building an image carousel in WordPress.

However, before we go any further with the technical stuff, we need to understand the importance of image carousels in WordPress. Now, the reason why we have to get a better understanding of its advantages and objectives is because this way there will be no doubt about why they are today a crucial part of many websites.

To answer all the questions you may have regarding this topic, we’ll dive into the most common FAQs like:

  • How to make image carousels in WordPress?
  • How to customize the appearance, control, speed, and transitions?
  • How to add descriptions and captions?
  • Which plugin is best suited for creating image carousels?

and so much more.

That’s not even all of it, we’ll also explore how Smart Slider 3 can assist you in building sliders that are guaranteed to leave your audience filled with surprise and wonder.
So let’s dive in and learn how to make the most out of image carousels in WordPress.

📚 Table of contents

🎓 Understanding Image Carousels in WordPress
Getting Started with Smart Slider
✏️ Creating Image Carousels with Smart Slider
💻 Advanced Features and Customization
💡 Conclusion

Understanding Image Carousels in WordPress

Slider carousels or image carousels, which are also occasionally referred to as slideshows due to their behavior, represent content in a fascinating way. They introduce their details or images in a rotating style.

Their way of offering visually engaging content in an interactive method gained them increasing popularity among web designers and developers.
In addition, their ability to represent captivating content in a limited space also didn’t lessen the appeal.

Why Use Image Carousels?

Purpose:

  • Presenting customer testimonials or reviews:

Testimonial carousel in Smart Slider
Live Preview

 

  • Highlighting products and services:

Full width product carousel in Smart Slider
Live Preview

Smart Slider product carousel
Live Preview

 

  • Showcasing image galleries:

Showcase image galleries in Smart Slider
Live Preview

 

  • Displaying logos:

Display logos with the Minimal logo slider in Smart Slider
Live Preview

 

  • Introducing your team:

Introduce your team with Smart Slider's Crossfit slider
Live Preview

 

  • Presenting your latest posts:

Post carousel in Smart Slider
Live Preview

 

  • Flaunting your social media posts:

Instagram Carousel in Smart Slider
Live Preview

 

Benefits:

  • Increase Engagement: They motivate interaction with your slider, which results in longer visit times.
  • Effective Space Utilization: Carousels solve your space issues by letting you display numerous bits of material in a small space even when your screen space is limited.

Smart Slider's product category carousel
Live Preview

 

  • Visual Appeal: Dynamic and eye-catching carousels improve your website’s looks and make a lasting impact.
  • Better Storytelling: Carousels have a narrative flow that makes it possible to convey stories or lead visitors on particular journeys.
  • Very Adaptable: You can implement them into a variety of websites, including blogs, e-commerce, portfolios, and business websites.

What is the Best Plugin for Creating Image Carousels in WordPress?

If you search for plugins that allow you to create image carousels for WordPress, you will find various options at your fingertips. However, Smart Slider is an outstanding alternative.

There are various plugins available for WordPress that allow you to create image carousels. Nevertheless, Smart Slider 3 is a highly suggested alternative. To speed up the production of carousels, this robust and feature-rich plugin provides a user-friendly interface, several customization possibilities, and a selection of pre-designed templates. Smart Slider makes it easy to make professional and highly engaging image carousels for your site. It helps you with improving your website’s visual appeal.

The new way to build a Slider
Next generation visual editor, customizable animations & effects, and access to hundreads of premade templates.
Get Started
Smart Slider 3 - The new way to build a Slider

Now, we fully understand image carousels and the benefits that come with them. Let’s move on to the actual actions we have to take to create them in WordPress with Smart Slider.

Getting Started with Smart Slider

The first step in the building process of image carousels is to install and set up the Smart Slider plugin on your WordPress site.

With Smart Slider creating carousels is simply the best. It provides a number of customization options to achieve your desired look without sacrificing the user experience or technical necessities for SEO. Let’s take off on this journey together.

Installing and Setting Up Smart Slider 3

This can be achieved in a few simple steps:

  • Navigate to the left column of your WordPress dashboard to the “Plugins” section and click on the “Add new” option.
  • Write “Smart Slider 3” into your search bar, then click on the “Install Now” button.

Installing Smart Slider

 

  • As soon as it’s ready, you can activate the plugin for your website.

Once you are done with the activation process, Smart Slider will offer you all the visual and textual guides you will need through documents and tutorial videos.

Smart Slider 3’s Dashboard

When you are ready, you can move on to the next step of navigating to the Smart Slider Dashboard where the actual magic happens. Here you can start creating your image carousels, but first:

  • You need to get comfortable with the various possibilities the Dashboard offers.

Smart Slider's Dashboard

 

  • Then you can move on to check out the wide range of pre-designed and stunning templates the template library provides. Make sure to check out all of the unique slider types as well.
Page slider templates
Available templates in Smart Slider 3

Create your First Image Carousel

You can either choose to start from scratch or you could try out a template that matches your idea:

  • Press the “New Project” button, so you can start creating your slider with the carousel slider type.
  • It’s up to you if you would like to start with a completely blank slider or add a template from the library.

Create a new project in Smart Slider

Managing your Slides

Now as your slider is created, let’s dive into how you can make it your own unique image carousel slider:

  • Firstly, to add new slides to your design, simply click on the “Add Slide” option, this way you can make it into an actual carousel.
  • Boost your slider’s content by uploading your images. You can add it to your slide’s background or just as a design element.
  • Not to mention, you can tailor your content to your own preferences, by including headings, buttons, transition effects, or any type of design. Smart Slider offers a wide range of features that you can play around with until you find the most suitable ones.

Now that we’ve answered the “How do I add an image carousel in WordPress?” question, we can gather that if you follow these easy steps, adding an image carousel to your WordPress website doesn’t have to take a genius. Smart Slider’s clean interface and extensive settings help you out and take the burden off your chest.

Let’s move on to the next section, which will help us discover the possibilities of customization in Smart Slider 3.

Creating Image Carousels with Smart Slider

Smart Slider stands out from other sliders with its broad options for design. Therefore, if you are looking for a plugin that allows you to conveniently edit the effects and look of your image carousel and tone it to your page’s individual design, then you should try out Smart Slider.

Let’s find out how to make the most of Smart Slider’s various features for image carousel customization.

Styling and Design

You can find a wide range of tools to edit your carousel:

Carousel Size settings in Smart Slider

 

  • Slide Editor: Here you can configure all of your design elements in your slide to match your brand. This includes backgrounds, colors, fonts, and many more unique settings.

Animations

There are some unique ways to elevate your project with fascinating effects in Smart Slider. Let’s look at some of them that can improve the visual impact of your image carousel:

  • Animation Types: To create dynamic and seamless slide changes, choose from a variety of transitions and animations, you can set your slide to a single switch and more.
  • Duration: Tailor transition time to manage the rate at which slides change delivering the best possible user experience.

Removing or Adding Captions

Smart Slider 3 lets you add captions or descriptions to give your photographs more context or information:

  • Text and Heading Layer: Easily add text layers to your slides to add informative text or draw attention to particular elements. Don’t forget that the clearer the images and shorter the text, the more likely users are to engage with your content.
  • Formatting Options: Change your captions’ font family, size, color, alignment, and animation effects. Moreover, pay special attention to the buttons and links, they should be large enough so that they can be easily clicked, even on mobile devices.

Responsive Design

It is essential to make sure your image carousel appears fantastic on all devices in today’s mobile-driven environment. Making responsive carousels is easier with Smart Slider 3:

  • Basic responsive behavior: The responsive behavior of the carousel slider is one that it displays as many slides as it can fit within the current size, without resizing the slides until the last one can no longer fit.
  • Responsive controls: The slider is touch-friendly for mobile users, and it includes both arrows and bullets for navigation and quick access to the slides, which you can hide if you want to save space.
  • Full-width product carousel: This image carousel has equal spacing between each slide as a result of the side spacing option.
  • Single Switch: To eliminate empty space you can enable this setting while also setting the Main Animation to Horizontal.

Main Animation settings in Smart Sldier

 

  • Utilize the mobile-friendly features: Optimize the font sizes with the Font-Resizer, adjust the layout, and everything that may come up in order to offer an effortlessly convenient sliding for your audience.

FAQs

Can I Customize the Appearance of the Image Carousel in WordPress?

Wholly and undoubtedly! With Smart Slider 3 you are provided with all the tools you can think of to customize your image carousels in order to match your own unique taste.

Can I Control the Speed and Transition Effects of the Image Carousel in WordPress?

To answer shortly, yes you can. You can completely manage the speed, duration, and transition effects of your image carousel with Smart Slider 3 to produce eye-catching visual effects.

 

You have the ability to make your WordPress site’s image carousel into a visually appealing and compelling slider by using Smart Slider 3. We’ll look at even more advanced options that can elevate your carousel in the following section.

Advanced Features and Customization

It can be gathered that Smart Slider offers a wide range of options to take your image carousel to the next level in WordPress.

Now, let’s look at some of the more advanced features that we hardly mentioned above, so they need more explanation to do. These are the ultimate solutions for effective performance and interactivity with your carousel.

How do I Add Navigation Arrows or Dots to the Image Carousel in WordPress?

With Smart Slider you can, without any difficulty, insert arrows and bullets into your slider. This makes it easy to enhance the user experience, giving them control over your image carousel.

In the Controls tab add arrows or bullets or even both to your image carousel to improve the user experience:

  • Arrows: Give users the option of manually navigating the slides using the designable arrow icons.

Arrow settings in Smart Slider

 

  • Include Bullets: At the bottom of the carousel, you can show a series of dots that represent the current slide and allow for easy navigation. Design them to match your preferences.

Bullet settings in Smart Slider

Dynamic Content

You have control over what particular post or page your image carousel displays thanks to Smart Slider 3:

  • To ensure that just the chosen pages or posts are displayed and that they appear exactly how you want them to, use the variable option in Smart Slider. They allow you to pull data from a dynamic source to your slide.
  • With them, you can pull the post titles, descriptions, or URLs to your slides.
  • To use them, add a layer to your slide and find the Data button above the input field.

Data button in Smart Slider

 

  • Then, clicking on the button will open the Insert variable popup, where you can find the list of available variables and the result they’ll display.

Insert variable in Smart Slider

Are There Any SEO Considerations for Image Carousels in WordPress?

Without any doubt! Smart Slider takes into consideration every aspect of your image carousel to optimize for SEO.

Additionally, here are some awesome tips to improve it and make it even more noticeable:

  • Add alt text to your images: They make it easier for search engines to index your images, especially when the slider mostly represents images with a small amount or no text at all.

Add alt text to your images in Smart Slider

 

  • Set proper H tags: Well-structured content is crucial for SEO, adding the correct headings can make or break your visibility.

Structured text for SEO in Smart Slider

 

  • Write text without H tags: Not everything needs to be a heading.

With these cutting-edge options, Smart Slider 3 gives you the freedom to design image carousels that are customized to your unique preferences. Hop on to the final section for a summary of the main ideas we discussed.

Conclusion

All things considered, image carousels can be used as the perfect tool for mesmerizing and enlightening your audience. As we all know, visual engagement can be essential in today’s digital environment.

We learned that you can design gorgeous image carousels in WordPress that not only draw attention but also improve user experience. All this is thanks to the flexibility and powerful features of Smart Slider 3.

In addition, we looked at how to use Smart Slider 3 for this purpose following a step-by-step process. From setup and installation to customization we covered everything.
By reading through these recommendations, you now have all the information and resources you will need.

Therefore, now you can design interactive carousels that are both visually appealing and match the goals of your website.

Smart Slider is here to take the burden off your chest and help you implement and take advantage of these benefits. So in case you still haven’t checked out these features, you should make sure to don’t miss out. These characteristics include an easy-to-use interface with various settings for customization so you can create your own ideal image carousel in WordPress.

Regret is often born from missed opportunities. So why wait and regret? Get started and elevate your website with stunning image carousels that catch the eye and leave your visitors in a daze. Keep in mind, that every step you take has an impact on your online presence.

Are you ready? Install Smart Slider 3, if you haven’t yet, and unlock a world of possibilities for your image carousel in the WordPress world. It’s time to engage and captivate all of the users.

The post Step-by-Step Guide: Create an Image Carousel in WordPress appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> How to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate with Smart Slider https://smartslider3.com/blog/how-to-increase-your-websites-conversion-rate-with-smart-slider/ Wed, 05 Apr 2023 07:03:01 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=51770 It can be overwhelming to make your business stand out from competitors in today’s digital age. Therefore, it is crucial for every business owner to have a strong online presence. To achieve this you need a website that can convert visitors into actual customers. That’s where Smart Slider comes in. As the most popular slider […]

The post How to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate with Smart Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]>
It can be overwhelming to make your business stand out from competitors in today’s digital age. Therefore, it is crucial for every business owner to have a strong online presence. To achieve this you need a website that can convert visitors into actual customers. That’s where Smart Slider comes in.

As the most popular slider plugin on the market with over 900.000 active installs, Smart Slider is the best solution for your business if you want to drive conversions and increase engagement by creating eye-catching sliders. In this post, we’ll explore a few ways Smart Slider can boost your website’s conversion rate. Read on to discover the power of Smart Slider.

📚 Table of contents

Make a Strong First Impression
✏️ Make Your Content Stand Out
🎓 Increase Engagement
📱 Optimize Your Slider
🏗️ Build Landing Pages
💻 E-Commerce Product Slider
💡 Conclusion

The new way to build a Slider
Next generation visual editor, customizable animations & effects, and access to hundreads of premade templates.
Get Started
Smart Slider 3 - The new way to build a Slider

Make a Strong First Impression with Your Website’s Slider

First impressions are groundbreaking when it comes to websites. Visitors can quickly create an opinion about your website, and it will highly affect the long-term impact on how they perceive your business. That is why it is crucial to ensure that your website’s design is intriguing and engaging from the start.

Using the template sliders in Smart Slider is one approach to leaving a lasting impression on your visitors. You don’t need any prior design knowledge to quickly and easily create a slider that looks professional with these pre-made sliders.

It only requires 2 steps:

  • Select the template that best benefits your goals
  • Add your own content

And you’re good to go.

Moreover, Smart Slider provides you with a selection of slider sizes, which you can find under the Size settings tab. There are also different Slider types that determine the look of your slider allowing you to easily customize them for your website.

You shouldn’t let a bad first impression put off potential clients. With Smart Slider’s template sliders, you can design without any hardships a visually attractive slider that grabs your audience’s attention right away.

Make Your Content Stand Out

What is the most important step to increase conversions? Make sure that your number-one content is primarily displayed on your website. If you use Smart Slider it’s easy to accomplish.

You can add texts, images, buttons, and other layers directly on top of your slides with Smart Slider’s drag-and-drop layer feature. This allows you to emphasize your greatest content and bring attention to the most important information you provide. You can even add different animations and effects to your layers to help your content stand out and create a more engaging user experience.

Here are some examples of how you can achieve this using different types of content:

WordPress Post Slider Carousel example
This template is used by bloggers to showcase their most popular posts in a dynamic and interactive way. It can also be customized to fit the blog’s design, making it an effective tool for increasing engagement and promoting content.

Live Preview

WordPress Testimonial Slider example
A testimonial slider is a dynamic and interactive way to display positive feedback from satisfied users. It’s an effective technique to build trust with potential customers. Our template can be customized to fit your website’s design, making it a powerful tool for promoting products and services.

Live Preview

WordPress Product Slider with special offers
This slider template is a highly effective marketing tool that can be used to highlight discounts and deals for potential customers. It features a series of visually appealing slides, showcasing special offers and promotions. This slider can be placed on the homepage or product page to draw attention to your offers and increase conversions.

Live Preview

Product carousel
A product gallery slider template is a visually appealing and interactive tool for displaying products in a slideshow format. The template typically features high-quality images of each product, along with its name and price. This slider can be customized to fit the design of your website, making it an effective tool for showcasing products and increasing sales.

Live Preview

This without any doubt increases the visibility of your most important content, consequently increasing its engagement.

Increase Engagement with Interactive Sliders

It’s very handy to add interactive elements to your sliders as your visitors usually prefer having control over what they see. Pay attention to auto-playing sliders. It can be frustrating if they want to stop to read the content or skip to another slide but there’s no option to do that because you didn’t offer them any controls.

Smart Slider offers numerous interactive features that you can use to create engaging sliders, like:

  • Buttons
  • Arrows
  • Bullets
  • Thumbnails
  • Textbar

And many more. These are perfect for taking your customer to a product page or encouraging them to take action using a CTA button.

A call to action button can be pretty challenging to create. Thankfully, Smart Slider provides you with everything to create a strong and clear CTA that stands out on your slider. You can either choose from the many pre-made ones and customize them to your company’s needs or create a new one with our layer options.

Slider Landing page with strong CTA button
Live Preview

These elements give meaning to the interaction between you and your customers and as a consequence lead to a higher level of engagement with your business.

This is one of the most important steps in converting your visitors into actual customers. Fortunately, Smart Slider’s easy-to-use interface and helpful features encourage your customers to take action in the most subtle ways possible.

Optimize Your Slider for All Devices

Nowadays many people choose to browse on their mobile devices, so it’s important to make sure your slider is optimized for smaller screens. Luckily with Smart Slider, you can create a responsive slider so you don’t have to worry about losing traffic. Besides, there are some features you can easily customize before proceeding.

Font Sizes

Simply use the Text Scale option to modify the font size of your content.

One of the many benefits of this setting is that it is device-specific, so you don’t need to worry about changing the font size on the other devices as well.

Hide Layers On Devices

It can happen to anyone that some of the layers they have on the desktop don’t look good on the mobile view. Well, rest assured as with our slider you can easily hide any layer you want on any device. To access this option go to the layer window and use the Show on feature.

Being able to hide your layers individually can make a huge difference.

Hide Slides On Devices

Another useful option to make your slides more responsive is, in case you are using the Pro version, hiding slides on different devices.

How to hide slides on different devices

Hide Sliders On Devices

Or just simply turn off the slider and the whole of it won’t show on the chosen device.

How to hide sliders on different devices

Controls

Furthermore, your controls can also be hidden as some of them are easier to use on desktops but on smaller devices can be challenging. This setting offers a smooth experience for those visitors who use smaller devices.

How to hide controls on different devices

All in all, you can effortlessly increase the likelihood of your visitors engaging with your content by making it easier to interact with it on any device. As you can see, you don’t need to worry about the responsive behavior of your slider if you choose Smart Slider 3.

How Can Smart Slider Help You Build Landing Pages That Convert?

If you decide on using Smart Slider to build your landing page you get an amazing tool to work with. It presents your visitors with a clear slider that helps you with highlighting your brand’s key features and benefits.

Nowadays Smart Slider can be so much more than just a slider. You can also create compelling landing pages with clear call-to-action buttons. This layout without any doubt encourages your visitors to take an interest and get involved with your brand.

Our template library offers a variety of templates that are designed to convert. In the “Page” category you can find all the custom landing page templates that you can use or even customize for any type of product, service, or business.

Page slider templates
Available templates in Smart Slider 3

With Smart Slider’s clear interface creating landing pages can be an easy and smooth process rather than overwhelming. This is the best way to make it simple for your visitors to complete their journey of becoming your customers. Achieve it by offering them a clean and easy-to-navigate landing page.

Smart Slider: The Ultimate Tool for E-Commerce Product Slider

In today’s world, it’s challenging to stand out with your online store. More and more people tend to shop online, increasing the competition in e-commerce. It’s crucial to be able to customize your website for conversions. That’s where Smart Slider comes in.

You have the option to choose from our many product slider templates that are designed to convert, but you are not limited to it. You can simply create your own slider with the tools we offer without any coding knowledge. And the best thing is the number of sliders you can create is unlimited!

By using Smart Slider you can create product sliders that can highlight your:

  • Best-selling products
  • Special offers
  • Even some deals related to them

Besides that, it’s possible in just a few clicks to add a clear and unique CTA button to motivate your visitors to complete their customer’s journey and make a purchase.

Either you use the Carousel or the Showcase slider type both offer a beautiful layout with great responsive behavior.

Different slider types

However, they act differently in a responsive scenario. The Carousel type shows its slides in the same size, showing different amounts of them on different screen sizes.

On the other hand, the Showcase type shows the same amount of slides in every scenario.

You should try using Smart Slider’s Carousel or Showcase slider type and start designing irresistible product sliders if you want to achieve your goal of optimizing your e-commerce website for conversions.

Conclusion

All in all, Smart Slider offers every tool you can think of and more to boost your visitors’ engagement and turn them into actual customers. From all the cool and unique templates it can provide you with to its simple and easy-to-use interface, it gives you every gadget to catch your customers’ attention.

Therefore, we can simply conclude that Smart Slider 3 is the ultimate solution for any website that wants to increase its conversion rate.

Don’t just believe these words, download the Smart Slider 3 plugin for free and try it for yourself and let the magic happen. Your visitors will thank you for it.

It’s also worth your time to check our tutorial videos by which you can learn a lot.

The post How to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate with Smart Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> 9 Point Ultimate Checklist to Create your Next Slider https://smartslider3.com/blog/slider-checklist/ Thu, 08 Sep 2022 07:20:34 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=12367 When Smart Slider 3 was designed, we took special care of making it as responsive and mobile friendly as possible, while keeping the settings simple and easy to understand for everyone. We also made sure that no one has to write a single line of code when making a responsive slider, so every option that […]

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When Smart Slider 3 was designed, we took special care of making it as responsive and mobile friendly as possible, while keeping the settings simple and easy to understand for everyone. We also made sure that no one has to write a single line of code when making a responsive slider, so every option that makes your slider 100% responsive is available in our intuitive interface.

In this article, I’ll introduce the most useful options and settings in Smart Slider 3. Take a look at this slider checklist, and create a good working and well designed slider for your WordPress or Joomla website.

📚 Table of contents

1. 💡 Planning
2. 📏 Slider sizes
3. 🖼️ Slider images
4. ✏️ Content
5. 🎨 Style
6. 📱 Mobile devices
7. 🔍 SEO
8.Performance
9. 🎁 Animation & Effects

The new way to build a Slider
Next generation visual editor, customizable animations & effects, and access to hundreads of premade templates.
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Smart Slider 3 - The new way to build a Slider

1. Planning

Before you start creating your slider, the first thing you should do is to plan your slider. These 5 questions can help you start before editing.

  • What is your goal with the slider? This is one of the most important questions what you should know the answer for. Do you want to use it as a design element, call the user to an action, or do you want to make a gallery?
  • Where will you put the slider? Will it be a homepage slider, a carousel at your product page, or do you want to put it into your post?
  • What type of slider do you need? Do you want a full width slider, a full page slider or a carousel for your website?
  • What will you put into the slider? If you have the text and the images before you start creating your slider, you can save time.
  • How many slides do you want? Do you want to create a hero block with one slide, or an image slider with a predefined number of slides?

Take the time and answer these questions before you start to create your slider. It will make the editing easier and it is also important for creating a successful and well prepared slider.

2. Slider sizes

Setting a good slider size is a critical point in creating a slider. This value will define your slider size ratio, and the responsive sizes as well.

Set an optimal slider size

It is important to set an optimal slider size with which you will work. Don’t work with too big sizes. An optimal size for a slider is 1200px width and 500-800px height. In fact, we work with these numbers in our templates as well. Additionally, a smaller slider size makes it easier to edit your slider.

Choose the right layout

As every device has different size, setting the right layout is critical in creating a slider. The slider size defines the slider size ratio, but the layout defines how your slider should behaves on different screen sizes.

Slider sizes in Smart Slider 3
Full width layout with 1200px slider width (left) and 1920px width (right)

If you use Boxed layout then the slider can be as big as the container it’s in. If the Fullwidth layout is selected, the slider tries to fill the space between your browser’s left and right side, so the slider will reach outside of its container if needed. However, the height will be calculated based on the set slider size, so it won’t fill the browser window vertically. If you want your slider to have 100% width and the height of your screen, you can use the Full page layout.

Set limits

If you set a slider size, it will change with the screen. It can happen that your slider content will be too tall or too wide. To avoid that behaviour use the Limit Slide Width option. This will only restrain the width of the layers, but the background image will still stretch out to 100% width if your slider uses Full width layout.

🎓 Use almost the same amount of content on each slide. When you use Default layers, the height of your slide is based on the layers inside. And the height of the whole slider is defined by the tallest slide.

3. Slider images

A well chosen slider image has a big impact on the visitor. It’s important what kind of images you use. There are more things you should pay attention if you want to create a good-looking and fast loading slider.

Use an optimized image

To create a good slider, it is necessary to pay attention to the quality and size of the images. A large image can slow down your slider’s speed, and it can be disturbing. You should pay attention that a small image can have a big size too, if its quality is too good. Above a particular level of quality people’s eyes can’t see the difference, so don’t use images with too high quality.

Static Text Slider

Set a device specific background image

It can happen that your background image looks and works perfectly on desktop, but not on mobile. Or it looks good also on mobile, but it’s loads slowly. Your mobile users should not load a wide and big image for their small screens. To avoid that you can set different images for each device in the Pro version of Smart Slider 3, which will reduce the loading time, too.

4. Content

To create a good responsive slider you should pay attention to the content of your slides. Your content is the reason why people come to your website. With Smart Slider 3 you can use a lot of layers such as heading or text layer with which you can build up a good content to your website. Media contents are also important, with a video slider you can grab the visitors’ attention as well.

Layout

Using a structure can be familiar from page builders. With rows and cols you can build up your slider, and it can help you align your layers, too. I can suggest that you should always use the content mode and a structure, it will make the whole building process easier.

Set a wrap after value

If you build up your slider with rows and cols, you can set breakpoints where the col should wrap. This setting is really useful on mobiles where you can put the cols under each other.

Different text length for every device

While a long text fits well on a large layer on your desktop slider, it is very unlikely that it will fit and look good on mobile. The text layer has a special option that no other layer has: it is possible to create device specific texts that can be managed on one layer.

Text layer in Smart Slider 3
With text layer you can set different text length for every device

5. Style

A good design can be an important point in a website. It is necessary that the visitor can read all the content on desktop and mobile devices as well. To create a clean but modern design try to maintain harmony in your slider. In other words, avoid using too many font families or colors.

  • Check the responsive views. Always take a look at the mobile and tablet view, and make changes if it is needed.
  • Keep the harmony. Use matching colors, and font-families.
  • Avoid too much text. If you put too much text in your slider, the visitors won’t read it. Place a CTA button with a short text instead and navigate your visitors to another page.
  • Mix the editing modes. Content mode is the best choice to create your structure and place your content. Canvas mode is perfect for decoration, and creating specially placed layers.
  • Don’t take your design to the extreme. Don’t use too many animations, effects and colors on your slider, it can be disturbing for your visitors.

🎓 Check our article and learn how to design your slider properly.

6. Mobile devices

Creating a mobile friendly website is a must have task what you should take into account since nowadays everybody uses their smart devices to browse on the web. With Smart Slider 3 you can create a responsive slider, but you should take care of a few things.

Font sizes

The layers that looked perfectly on desktop might need some adjustments on mobile. Usually what you need to change is the font size, what you can easily do with the Text Scale option. You can modify your font size with this function and it is device specific so the font size of the other devices will not change.

Hide layers on devices

You can disable a layer on any devices using the Show on option at the layer window. This feature is useful even if the layers are legible, but there are just too many of them, and that doesn’t really work well on mobile devices.

All in all, being able to hide any layer individually can make a huge difference when it comes to displaying the slider on smaller screen sizes.

Hide slides on devices

In the Pro version of Smart Slider you can hide not just layers, but entire slides on different devices. You can find this option at the Slide.

Hide sliders on devices

You can hide not only layers but your whole slider on different devices. If you don’t need the slider on a device, you can turn it off, and no codes will be placed on your site.

Controls

The layers and background images are not the only responsive parts of your slider. With controls it is possible to set a responsive value which will determine how much the control should scale down or up on different devices.

If changing the responsive value doesn’t help, the controls can also be hidden on any device. Hiding them will make the slider and the page cleaner and improve the user experience. The bullets are easy to click on a desktop, but when you use your phone, it is not easy to tap them with your fingers, so it is advised to simply turn them off on small devices.

7. SEO

Smart Slider 3 is an SEO friendly slider plugin, but you need to do your part, too. When you create a SEO friendly content, you need to pay attention to the basics of SEO. For instance, headings and paragraphs are important for your SEO structure. To ensure your slider does well in this matter, make sure to add headings and paragraphs as well. In order to make your images SEO friendly, be sure to always fill their alt tag.

search engine reads text from slider

8. Performance

Your users expect your site to load fast when they access it. The speed depends on a lot of factors and one of them is the slider. A slider can be an important point in a website loading time, so you should use it properly.

  • Don’t use too many slides. Unless you create an image gallery, don’t put more than 5 slides to your slider.
  • Optimize your images. Quality and size of the images are the most important factors what you should pay attention to. Don’t work with too high quality and too big images.
  • Font-family rule. If you use many different font-families on your page, it can increase the loading time because they should load one by one. Try to limit the number of font families to maximum 3.
  • Use the optimize settings. Smart Slider 3 have more options to optimize your slider. You can optimize your images to have lower resolution and quality. You can also convert them to WebP format or lazy load them.

🎓 Do you want to speed up your website? Check our article and learn how you can make a fast loading slider.

9. Animation & Effects

Smart Slider 3 offers a lot of animation & effects, already in the free version. With a nice background animation you can cheer up your slider, and with layer animations you can grab your visitors’ attention and make a modern and good-looking slider.

Set your layer animation at the Layer window
Set your layer animation at the Layer window

Also you have an option to create an auto playing slider. This way you can share more content with your visitors, but you should take care of the slider autoplay interval, and always give a control for the user to stop it.

Conclusion

Smart Slider 3 has a lot of settings with which you can create a stunning slider. And if you know the points what you should pay attention to, creating a slider will be fun. Use optimized images, fill the alt tags, and check the result on different devices, and your slider will be an important part of your page. It’s also worth the time to check our tutorial videos and take a look at the settings in the slider examples, by which you can learn a lot.

The post 9 Point Ultimate Checklist to Create your Next Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> What is a Slider? The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Sliders https://smartslider3.com/blog/what-is-a-slider/ Wed, 10 Aug 2022 08:00:55 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=9831 Sliders. Carousels. Slideshows. No matter what you call them, sliders are an incredibly versatile design tool that allow you to showcase images, video, and other content beautifully and more effectively while maximizing the space on your website. Whether you need a simple way to display a slideshow of photos on an eCommerce or real estate […]

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Sliders. Carousels. Slideshows. No matter what you call them, sliders are an incredibly versatile design tool that allow you to showcase images, video, and other content beautifully and more effectively while maximizing the space on your website.

Whether you need a simple way to display a slideshow of photos on an eCommerce or real estate websites, or want a bold video header with calls-to-action, sliders can help you quickly grab your visitors’ attention.

In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into sliders, using examples from Smart Slider 3, a popular slider plugin for WordPress. We’ll explore what they are, how they’re used, the various kinds of sliders you can create, as well as all the different types of behaviors, elements, animations and effects you can include in your sliders.

What is a Slider?

The term slider is used for a design element, which is added to a WordPress page to display visual content. From classic image slideshows to modern fullscreen sliders, sliders come in all shapes and sizes. Using the right WordPress slider plugin, it’s easy to create your own sliders.

Designers love sliders for their flexibility and the visual elements that make it easy to tell a compelling story. Site owners, on the other hand, love them because they can promote multiple facets of a business within one website component and space. At their most basic, an image slideshow might contain a series of images, each with its own caption, like this example:

image slider
Simple Image Slider with Caption

But in recent years, sliders have evolved to provide greater functionality and feature beyond simple images and text. Now, you can add video, use layers to combine images, text, and buttons, and even include a mix of elements and animations — all within the same slider.

Let’s take a look at a few modern examples.

Amazon uses sliders liberally throughout its site to promote its products. On the homepage, there’s a slider with featured products, as well as several small sliders below with best sellers.

Amazon homepage slideshow

In this example, Airbnb uses a slider on its homepage to display cities were people can book short stay accommodation around the world:

Airbnb slider

And in this more complex example, Lonely Planet uses a fullscreen homepage slider incorporating navigation and text previews to showcase its latest featured articles:

Lonely Planet slider

These are just some of the big brands using sliders to showcase their best content while maximizing all-important screen space.

But it’s not just big brands using sliders. Sliders are easy to add to any WordPress site, and there are plenty of options out there, particularly for WordPress users.

How Do Sliders Work with WordPress?

Adding sliders to your WordPress site is as easy as installing and activating a plugin, and then using the provided visual builder to design your slider.

There are many WordPress slider plugins available, which allow you to create sliders and add them to any page or post on your site. You can download free slider plugins from WordPress.org. Below, you’ll see Smart Slider 3 is the highest rated slider plugin for WordPress:

Sliders in WordPress.org's plugin directory
Sliders in WordPress.org’s plugin directory

There are also many premium slider plugins available for WordPress, such as Smart Slider 3 Pro and Revolution Slider, the latter of which is packaged with many ThemeForest themes.

Typically, free slider plugins offer only basic features, such as the ability to create image sliders with captions and simple transitions. When you upgrade to a premium slider plugin, you can start building more complex sliders using layers, images, text, videos, CTAs, animations, and more.

The new way to build a Slider
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Smart Slider 3 - The new way to build a Slider

Types of Sliders

There are several different types of slider, each of which provides the structure for a slider, on top of which you can add other elements. These are the types of sliders you will find in Smart Slider 3:
Available slider types in Smart Slider 3: Simple, Block, Carousel and Showcase

  • Standard – Also known as a slideshow, this type of slider enables you to display several images, one at a time.
  • Carousel – This type of slider displays two or more images at a time, which users can cycle through.
  • Showcase – This type of slider lets you put the focus on one image, but also give a sneak peek at other images in the series.
  • Block – A content block features just one slide but can include many different elements (text, image, video, etc), animations and effects.

Types of Slider Layouts

In addition to slider types, there are different slider layouts that determine how a slider type will look on a web page.

Layouts in Smart Slider 3
Layouts in Smart Slider 3

  • Boxed – This is the most typical type of layout you’ll come across on the web, such as an on eCommerce site displaying product items. It makes the slider fit into its container.
  • Full width – Display a slider across the entire width of a page.
  • Full page – This fullscreen layout fills the entire page above-the-fold.

Working with Slider Layers

Free slider plugins (with the exception of Smart Slider 3) allow you to create only basic slideshows using images and text. Premium slider plugins, on the other hand, let you design to your heart’s content with layers.

Layers are basically content building block that you can add to sliders to create more functional, beautiful, and complex designs. Similarly, Photoshop and other image editing programs use layers to enable users to stack and work with different types of content.

The most basic layers you’ll find in premium slider plugins include: Headings, Text, Images, Buttons and Videos (YouTube, Vimeo, and self-hosted).

Some premium and advanced sliders may also offer other types of content layers, such as: Icons, Lists, Captions, Image boxes (and image areas), Transitions, Progress bars, Counters (and circle counters), Audio, Text areas and iFrame.

The best way to fully understand how layers work is to see them in action. Check out the video below to see how layers work in the free version of Slider Slider 3.

Adding Animations and Effects to Sliders

You’re probably familiar with the default right to left slide background animation that many images slideshows use when transitioning through images. But what’s exciting about working with sliders is that there are many more awesome animations and effects you can use to add both bold and subtle effects to your website.

Background Animations

Whether you want to fade, rotate, zoom, or have your images metaphorically explode, there are dozens of different background animations you can use for transitions between each slide.

Layer Animations

Similar to background animations, layer animations enabled you to animate particular layers in your slider, such as the button animation below.

Text Animations

With text animations you can animate your words and bring text to life as a chain of lines, words, or characters.

Ken Burns Effect

Make your slides pop with this elegant zooming and panning Ken Burns effect, invented for film. A simple way to give your images the illusion of motion.

Parallax

Add depth to your sliders—or, at least, the illusion of it—with parallax. Parallax images move at different speeds and create an optical illusion of depth.

Animated shape divider

Add moving curves, clouds, and diagonal shapes to your sliders with an animated shape divider effect.

shape divider
Animated Shape Divider Example

Particle effect

Stunning yet deceptively simple. Using the particle effect allows you to add moving shapes and lines, dots, triangles, and polygons that follow the cursor

particle slider
Particle Effect Example

Creating Sliders: Features and Functionality to Look Out for When Choosing a WordPress Slider Plugin

Now that you’ve got a basic understanding of the different types and behaviors of sliders, as well as layers, animations, and effects, it’s time to look at some of the advanced features you can expect to see in reputable WordPress slider plugins.

From different types of content and dynamic elements to performance and optimization capabilities, these are the features you should look out for when choosing a quality slider plugin.

Visual Editor

Every good slider plugin should come with a visual editor that allows you to design each individual slide, much like how you would with Photoshop and other image editing programs.

Visual editor allows you to drag-and-drop layers, change fonts, sizes, colors, add animations and effects, and generally manipulate the content in your slides to look exactly how you want.

Smart Slider 3’s Admin Interface
Smart Slider 3’s Admin Interface

Layers and Customization

Imagine if Photoshop didn’t have layers? It would be difficult to design and edit images, right? Surprisingly, many slider plugins don’t use layers. Without them, you’re severely limited in how you can design your plugins.

Layers allow you to create content-rich sliders, which might have various images, text, video, and other elements layered together to form one interactive slide.

When choosing a slider plugin, make sure it includes the most basic layers (headings, text, images, video, and buttons), as well as any advanced content you might need, such as icons, audio, lists, and counters.

Live Preview

Like any software, live preview allows you to quickly see every change you make in real-time. For example, after updating an image or adding a text layer or transition, you can click ‘Preview’ to quickly preview your changes and see what your slider looks like with all over your layers, animations and effects working together.

Dynamic Content

You aren’t limited to adding just static images, video, and text to your slides. Some slider plugins, like Smart Slider 3, allow you to populate slides with dynamic content, such as WordPress and Joomla blog posts, YouTube playlists, and even products from your WooCommerce site.

This means you can dynamically display content, such as your eCommerce store’s best-selling products, your latest blog posts, or even new video additions to your YouTube channel.

Product slider
Product slider

Page Builder Compatible

If you’ve built your site using a page builder, such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, Site Origin or WP Bakery Page Builder, be sure to check that any slider plugin you choose is compatible.

Responsive Design

Ensuring that your site design is responsive is crucial now that Google has moved to mobile-first indexing. So choose a slider plugin that provides responsive design out-of-the-box.

Some sliders, like Smart Slider 3, provide device-specific settings for desktop, tablet and mobile. This means your sliders will automatically adjust for different devices. You can choose to enable features like tilt and swipe, or simply turn off sliders for particular devices.

Support and Updates

Premium slider plugins should always come with priority support, so if you run into any issues you can get in touch for help. Support generally doesn’t come with free slider plugins, though you can use the WordPress Support Forums if you have any questions.

Keeping your slider plugin up-to-date is also important for security and performance, and so you can upgrade to receive new features.

Speed and Performance

There’s a common perception that sliders negatively impact website performance. Often, people add images to sliders that are too big or haven’t been optimized. So if a slider plugin further impacts performance, it’s a double whammy for page load speed.

It’s important that your slides load immediately but don’t slow down the loading of your pages, so look out for slider plugins that offer image optimization such as generating smaller images for tablet and mobile visitors and converting the images to WebP for faster load time. The ability to lazy load some of the images is another great feature to have. Both of these techniques will help your slides load quickly.

SEO-Friendly

When you’re adding different types of content such as images and video to your sliders, it makes sense to leverage it for SEO, right? So when choosing a slider plugin, make sure it’s been designed with SEO in mind and its HTML structure follow SEO best practice. This will ensure your individual slides—along with the alt text you have entered for your content—ranks in search.

Developer-Friendly

If you want even more control over the design of your slides, look for a slider plugin that’s developer-friendly and allows for custom code within slides, but also allows you to edit external files for customizations like animations and effects.

Conclusion

Now that you learned all there is to know about sliders and how they work with WordPress, you’re ready to start creating your own! As I mentioned above, there are some great free options, but I’d highly recommend starting out with Smart Slider 3, which you can download from WordPress.org.

Smart Slider 3 comes with loads of features and options (including everything mentioned in this article and more). Check out these stunning slider examples and download Smart Slider 3 for free to get started.

The post What is a Slider? The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Sliders appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> 7 Useful Slider Settings Which You Should Know https://smartslider3.com/blog/slider-settings/ Thu, 21 May 2020 06:41:54 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=23073 All plugins should have settings which you can customize the product with. It is also important at a WordPress slider plugin because with the slider settings you can customize how the slider should behave, and look in the front end. Each slider has their own slides, but the slider settings will determine how big your […]

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All plugins should have settings which you can customize the product with. It is also important at a WordPress slider plugin because with the slider settings you can customize how the slider should behave, and look in the front end. Each slider has their own slides, but the slider settings will determine how big your slider should be or how you can control it.

How to choose the right plugin?

First of all, you need is to choose a reliable plugin which you want to work with. But how do you know if a plugin is reliable? What I can suggest is that you should check the change log of the plugin. If you can see that the plugin has updates continuously, then you can see that the developers are working with their product.

It can also be useful if you check the plugin in the WordPress repository, and read the ratings from the users. In this case, you can get a complete view of the plugin.

Don’t be afraid to update

After you have installed the chosen plugin, and there is an update available that you can see in your WordPress Dashboard as well, don’t be afraid to update it, because it is important for security reasons. It is also possible that you get more features with the update, so why don’t you update?

The plugin developers care that you won’t lose any settings during the update that you have set before but it is possible to make a backup from your page for example with a backup plugin, and if something goes wrong, you can set the previous state.

Slider settings in Smart Slider 3

Smart Slider 3 is currently the most popular slider plugin in the official WordPress repository with 600.000 active installs and has a 5-star rating, so you can trust it.

If you decide to choose Smart Slider 3 or you have installed it before, meet the slider settings of Smart Slider 3 which can be useful at the slider creating.

The new way to build a Slider
Next generation visual editor, customizable animations & effects, and access to hundreads of premade templates.
Get Started
Smart Slider 3 - The new way to build a Slider

1. Set optimal sizes

It is important to set an optimal slider size which you will work with. These sizes will define the ratio of your slider, it is also important in slide editing as well. Don’t work with too big sizes. If you want to create a bigger slider, then set the responsive modes correctly. The responsive modes define how your slider should behave on different screens.

Slider sizes in Smart Slider 3
Full width responsive mode with 1200px slider width (left) and 1920px width (right)

In Smart Slider 3 there are more responsive modes available:

  • Auto responsive mode: if you use the auto responsive mode, then your slider will be as big as the container it’s in.
  • Full width mode: A full width slider fills the total width of the browser even if the container is smaller. It looks good on your home page as a header, but you can insert a slider into your blog post as well.
  • Full page mode: A full page slider will have 100% width and the height of your screen on every device. This mode is available only in the Pro version of Smart Slider 3.

It’s important to mention that when content mode is used, your slide’s height is based on the layers and all the slides’ height are based on your highest slide even if you set a maximum height.

🎓 Follow the 9-point slider checklist and create a good-working and successful slider.

2. Use the correct slider type

The slider type determines the look of your slider. In Smart Slider 3 there are more slider types available: Simple, Block, Showcase and Carousel.

Slider Types
Available slider types in Smart Slider at the Change Slider Type popup

The Simple type shows one slide at a time and people use them in a boxed style, for example in a post, or use them as a full width slider in the header. The block type is special because it can show only one slide. The Showcase and the Carousel slider can show more slides at the same time.

3. Always give control to your visitors

If you have a slider, you should care that the visitors like it if they have control over the slider. It can be disturbing if there is an autoplaying slider, but the user can’t stop it to read the content or can’t switch to the next slide.

The slider controls can be useful in navigating between slides, and it can also share information. For example, bullets can show how many slides you have in the slider, and thumbnails show a little preview of the slides.

4. Optimize your slider

The system of Smart Slider 3 works the way that the slider loads last on the website because of the positioning. The plugin waits until your website is completely built up to know how big your slider can be and where the layers should be.

However, it can happen that if you work with too big images, your slider can load slowly. In Smart Slider 3 you have settings to optimize your slider. You can resize the layers or make the quality of your images lower, and can also use the lazy loading setting.

🎓 If you want to learn more about how you can optimize your slider, check our article about slider performance!

5. Set the background fill mode

Choosing the right fill mode is also important at the slider creating. By default the “fill” option is used which will make the image as big as it needs to be to cover the whole slider. This means that if the slider and image ratios differ, the image will be cropped, and the focus points will decide which part of the image should stay on screen, so by default the center. If you want your whole image will be on your slide without being cropped, the “fit” filling mode is what you need.

Of course, you can set the background image filling modes separately at the slide settings, so you can fully customize your slider.

6. Give a nice visual effect to your slider

Using animations and effects can be a good choice if you want to make a powerful slider which attracts the eye. In Smart Slider 3 you can choose from more types of effects which you can set at the slider settings.

  • Parallax effect: The parallax makes the illusion of depth when your page moves. It works the way that it moves the images at a different speed and show them from a different angle.
  • Shape divider: The shape divider is a modern design element which you can use as a separator between sections. You can animate it, change its color, and place it on the top or bottom of the slider.
  • Crypto Block
    Curve type shape on the bottom of the Crypto Block
  • Particle effect: The particle effect is a variety of small objects. They move around the slider and interact with each other or with the visitor.
  • Ken burns effect: This effect is one of the most popular effects for background images which can smoothly zoom.
  • Background animation: You can also choose a background animation to animate your background images.
  • Main animation: The main animation is the basic animation to switch your slides with. You can set horizontal or vertical or fade controls.

7. Create lightbox from slide backgrounds

The lightbox is a popular feature in Smart Slider 3 Pro. Did you know that you can create lightbox images from your slide background images? To do so you’ll need to have background images on all slides, and then you can turn this option on at the Slider settings → Slides tab.

Backgrounds in lightbox

With a lightbox slider you can enlarge an image with one click, it can be useful if you want to create a mini gallery from your slider.

Final Thoughts

The slider settings are useful part in slider creation. It is important to set them properly, but you can always change them, so if you decide to change something, just go to the slider settings, modify what you want, preview it, and if you like the result, save it.

If you are new at Smart Slider 3, I can suggest to check our Youtube channel where you can learn more from Smart Slider 3 and its settings.

The post 7 Useful Slider Settings Which You Should Know appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Should I use a Slider? https://smartslider3.com/blog/should-i-use-a-slider/ Fri, 15 May 2020 07:00:03 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=20007 As a web developer, I’m sure you’ve asked yourself: should I use a slider in my next project? You might even did your own research on the topic. If so, you probably found daunting articles claiming you should not use a slider, ever. Nonetheless, sliders are the most popular design elements of WordPress sites. Clients, […]

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As a web developer, I’m sure you’ve asked yourself: should I use a slider in my next project? You might even did your own research on the topic. If so, you probably found daunting articles claiming you should not use a slider, ever. Nonetheless, sliders are the most popular design elements of WordPress sites. Clients, designers and theme developers love and cherish them. Because of this, many developers face the question: should I use a slider, too?

Why do people like having sliders on their websites?

Most themes, both free and premium, feature a gorgeous slideshow on their home page. As a matter of fact, the best selling WordPress theme, Avada, has not one but four slider plugins ready to use. This suggests their clients that they should use a slider, too. After all, sliders are excellent to display information in a compact manner.

So, should you use a slider in your next project? To answer the question, it’s important to understand why people like having a slider.

  • To make new content stand out. You can use a slider to show your latest blog posts. You can place this post slider on the homepage, for instance. Then it will help visitors learn more about the new content of your site.
  • Showing off content. Sliders are great to show testimonials or products, because they create a context. When visitors browse your ecommerce website, they know what to expect when they interact with the slider.
  • Storytelling. Sliders excel in many areas of the web design. What they’re better than any other tool is telling a story. Visitors can go forward and continue their adventure once they finished one slide.
  • Sliders are flexible. In fact, sliders are the most versatile design tools at your disposal. In fact, you can replace any part of your website with a slider. However, that doesn’t mean you should.
  • They’re visually pleasing. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to argue with this. Sliders are one of the most beautiful design elements you can have on your website.
  • Because everyone else uses sliders. If you check out a couple of landing pages, you’ll probably see many sliders there. While it’s not the best reason to have a slider, it’s an important factor for many people.
The new way to build a Slider
Next generation visual editor, customizable animations & effects, and access to hundreads of premade templates.
Get Started
Smart Slider 3 - The new way to build a Slider

How to use a slider on your website?

Sliders are versatile design elements that can fit any website. Because of that, there are good and bad ways to use them. In fact, I could write endless lists to tell you what you should or should not do with your slider. Instead here are five easy-to-follow rules to help you answer the question: should I use a slider?

  • Create sliders with a purpose. When you put any element on your website, they must serve a purpose. No matter how tempting it is, don’t use a slider just for the sake of having one.
  • Keep user experience in mind. Sliders are logical design elements, but that doesn’t mean you can forget about the visitor. Make sure any action you want them to take is easy and straightforward. If you add a CTA, make sure it’s easy to notice.
  • Give control. It’s popular to make sliders play automatically. If you choose to do this, make sure to allow the visitor to stop the autoplay on demand.
  • Give context. A large image on your home page without any context will do no good to your website. Besides, it’ll confuse your visitor and have a negative impact on your website. Add some text to the slides, like a heading, a description and a CTA button.
  • Avoid too much content. There’s only one thing worse than a slider without any content: one that has way too much. Of course, too much content on a slider is rather subjective. But if your slider is full of text and there’s not a single empty line, you can be sure that its too much.

Why don’t people like sliders?

It’s hard to find any other design element that divides designers and developers as much as sliders do. The internet is full of articles claiming that sliders are evil and you shouldn’t use them.

On the other hand, there are many good sliders out there, but they’re being punished by other’s bad practices. Sliders aren’t as bad as some people try to make them seen. In fact, they’re versatile enough to let you use them for any purpose.

So here are the most common seven reasons you’ll find about why you shouldn’t use a slider.

1. Sliders lower conversion rate

Usually, people put sliders to the top of the page. This makes them use up their most important real estate, without urging users to take action. An article I found claims that even if you put a CTA button on each slide, visitors won’t click on them. Well, if you check out the example slider they used to support this theory, you can confirm it’s true. You need to focus on the slider to notice the subtle Shop now button.

cta button

In fact, a good slider plugin lets you create much better CTA for your slider, which stands out and easy to see. A good CTA on your slider increases the conversion rate, because it gets clicked.

2. Sliders cause banner blindness

That was one of the most popular reasons I’ve seen. Banner blindness, in case you’re wondering, means that people ignore a section of a website, because it looks like an advertisement. People don’t like ads, that’s why adblock extensions are so popular. If your slider looks like a banner or advertisement, visitors won’t notice them.

The Neilson Norman group ran a usability study back in 2013. The visitor had to go to Siemens’ website and see if there are any special deals on washing machines. On this site, there were two sliders, which failed to do this simple task.

banner blindness

Here’s the biggest problem with the sliders on that page: they look like an ad, which people ignore. To make things worse, the top slider keeps rotating every 5 seconds. Now imagine you just arrived to the website and try to read and understand the first slide in five seconds. It’s an impossible task, no wonder the visitor ignored the slider.

3. Sliders are not SEO friendly

SEO is an important factor for every serious website. Therefore, website owners carefully choose what to put to their site to make it SEO friendly. However, their efforts are pointless if they add an element that isn’t SEO friendly. As a matter of fact, some people think sliders destroy the SEO of the page they’re on.

The fact that there are many sliders, which aren’t SEO friendly in 2020 is disturbing. But not all slider plugins follow the bad example. For instance, Smart Slider 3 is an SEO friendly slider plugin. As a result, it will not only not ruin your SEO, but it can help improving it.

search engine reads text from slider
Google reads text which was created by Smart Slider 3

4. They move too fast

I’m sure you’ve came across shouldiuseacarousel.com when you were trying to decide if you should use a slider. This website builds its argument on user experience.

The slider they use autoplays, like lots of other sliders do. Not only that, it moves so fast, it’s impossible to read the content of the slides. This forces the visitor to keep switching back to be able to read each slide’s content.

Here’s the thing: sliders don’t have to autoplay. Neither do they have to autoplay fast and sacrifice the user experience. In case you really need autoplay, then rather allow the user to stop and restart it when needed. But you can completely forget about autoplaying your slider. Instead of autoplay, consider giving full control to the user. Create CTA buttons, which switch slides when the visitors clicks them. This way the visitors get what they like the most: control over the content.

5. Sliders aren’t responsive

We’re living in an era, where over 60% of mobile users browse the internet from phone. This is a large number, which justifies the need of a good, responsive website. Despite the large demand, there are still many sliders, which are not responsive. Because of that, the site they’re on won’t be responsive anymore.

Smart Slider 3 isn’t one of the not-responsive slider plugins. In fact, it offers many options to optimize your slider for mobile devices. Because of this, you don’t need to worry about the responsive behavior of your slider if you choose Smart Slider 3.

6. Sliders are slow and will slow down your website

A heavy slider on your home page drastically slows it down. It also wastes important real estate on your site. For this reason many people suggest using a hero image or a static image instead of a slider. Unlike most sliders, these elements need only one image, which reduces the files the side has to load.

Smart Slider Optimization options
Smart Slider 3 has many options to speed up the slider

But a good slider plugin, like Smart Slider 3, cares about the speed of your website. It has cool optimization features, like lazy loading or image resizing. As a result, your website can load faster – even with a gorgeous slider on it!

7. They have accessibility problems

There are many examples and recommendations to help developers make their slider accessible. But many developers choose not to follow them. As a result, their product ends up having accessibility problems. Their users are left with two choices: drop the slider or fail to make their website accessible.

We know how important it is for everyone to be able to browse the web in a convenient way. This is why we developed Smart Slider 3 with accessibility in mind. In fact, we always improve the slider’s accessibility.

Conclusion

After reading many articles on the topic, I’ve came to a surprising conclusion. While all articles claim that sliders are bad, it seems it’s not the actual sliders that they don’t like. It’s rather the sliders’ design choices and the way they were set up.

Indeed, they’re right in some ways. If a slider isn’t user friendly, or bad for SEO or not responsive, it has no place on a website. But a slider that fulfills these criterion and is made well has its place. After all, sliders are the most versatile design tools you can use. So if you still haven’t answered the “should I use a slider?” question, there’s one last thing you need to know.

Sliders aren’t evil, they’re just not used well.

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]]> How to Create a Good Responsive WordPress Slider? https://smartslider3.com/blog/responsive-wordpress-slider/ Tue, 12 May 2020 06:00:33 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=19173 Nowadays people browse on their desktop computers, laptops, mobiles and tablets. They have different screen sizes so your website needs to adapt to any size. Unless your visitors can find what they look for on your WordPress website, they’ll leave. If your website looks bad on the visitor’s device you can lose a potential customer. […]

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Nowadays people browse on their desktop computers, laptops, mobiles and tablets. They have different screen sizes so your website needs to adapt to any size. Unless your visitors can find what they look for on your WordPress website, they’ll leave. If your website looks bad on the visitor’s device you can lose a potential customer. Not only do you need a responsive website, you need a responsive WordPress slider as well. Luckily, Smart Slider 3 is a great tool to create beautiful and fully responsive sliders.

How to make a responsive WordPress slider?

The easiest way to create a beautiful responsive WordPress slider is via Smart Slider 3. Even the free version allows you to create sliders which look perfect on mobile. Once you finish creating your slider you can easily add it to your website using its shortcode.

  1. You need to decide what kind of slider you need. Should it be a full width or full page slider?
  2. Think about the layout of your slider. What kind of content will your slider have?
  3. Create the slider using Default layers, in desktop view.
  4. Use the device icons and switch to tablet and mobile view and check your slider.
  5. Use the font size modifier if needed, to adjust the font sizes for a better look.
  6. Hide unnecessary layers on mobile or tablet.
The new way to build a Slider
Next generation visual editor, customizable animations & effects, and access to hundreads of premade templates.
Get Started
Smart Slider 3 - The new way to build a Slider

The highlights of Smart Slider 3

Smart Slider 3 is a responsive slider plugin for WordPress which you can use to add sliders to your website. The user interface is easy to learn and there are many slider settings which let you fine-tune your slider. Smart Slider 3 supports adding image and video slides as well. The slider is SEO friendly, so when you add images, you can give them alt and title text. For rich media support, you can add YouTube and Vimeo videos, and in the pro version, MP4 videos as well.

Layouts in Smart Slider 3

Here’s a few things to consider before you start making a responsive WordPress slider. First, you should think about how you want the slider to behave. It should be responsive, of course, but what more? Do you need the slider to be full width or full page, or should it fill the area where it is in and nothing more?

Smart Slider 3 has 3 different responsive layouts: Boxed, Full Width and Full Page.

Boxed Layout

A Boxed slider has a simple behavior: it fills the container where you’ve placed it. For instance, if you put the slider to your post content, it will be as wide as your post area. This way your responsive WordPress slider does not break your theme’s layout.

Today, most layouts are full width, but you can still find a couple of boxed designs. These sliders are great for a boxed layout, as they fits into its container. This responsive layout is the best for adding a slider to your WordPress post.

Full width layout

A full width slider fills the total width of the browser, even if its container does not. What’s so great about these sliders is that they have plenty of room. There’s enough space to put the content and the visitor can enjoy the background, too. Most themes feature a slider on their homepage, and this slider is usually a full width one. This makes them the most popular sliders around. If you check out a few full width sliders, you’ll understand why: they look gorgeous inside any theme.

Full width sliders are great for pretty much any purpose. Whether you want a post slider, a hero slider, or a simple image slider you can’t fail with this mode. The best part is, you don’t need to buy the pro version to create full width sliders with Smart Slider 3.

Full page layout

Full page sliders fill the browser width and height on every device. On desktop screens it gives you lots of space to place your layers, which is great. The problem width full page sliders is that their mobile size is short and narrow. On such a small size, there isn’t enough space to add more than a couple of layers.

Full page sliders are great for hero sliders. You can also take advantage of their greatness if you decide to create a landing page. This layout is available in the premium version of Smart Slider 3 only.

What are Default layers and how to use them to make a responsive WordPress slider?

Default layers provide a unique editing experience for Smart Slider users. Such layers are not available in any other responsive WordPress slider plugin. When you use Default layers, you can work on your slide as you would use a page builder. You can create rows with columns and place layers or other rows into the columns. Layers have connection to each other and align themselves based on their surroundings. For instance, put down a heading layer and place a button below. As you write more text to the heading layer, it pushes the button down. This behavior prevents the text ending up on top of or behind the button.

Creating a responsive WordPress slider using Default layers can seem hard at first glance. Default layers don’t allow the free positioning what most people are used to. It’s crucial to understand how it works and get used to thinking in structures. You need to spend some time to learn, but after you know the basics, you can work faster and better in this mode.

The basic responsive behavior of Default layers

We’ve created Default layers with the purpose to help you reduce the time spent with the slide editing. Structures let you work faster and more precise. The best part of working with Default layers is that when you set them up properly, it’s unlikely to get bad results on small screens. There’s a constant font size on each device, which makes sure the texts are legible on mobile.

The layers can adjust their position based on their surroundings. Additionally, Default layers layers will always fit the slider. When they need more space, they make the slider bigger. Rows wrap each column after the other on mobile to create a more mobile friendly layout.

Creating a responsive WordPress slider with Absolute layers

If you’ve ever used any slider plugin, you know how Absolute layers work. They’re based on simple drag and drop editing, which lets you put the layers anywhere within the slide area. The upside of Absolute layers is that t it looks easy and takes almost no time to learn. The downside is that the more layers you add the harder it will be to make the slider responsive.

Absolute layers have no connection to each other. Let’s say you have a heading layer and a button below then add more text to the heading layer. The heading layer won’t push the button below to make more space for itself. As a result, it can cover the button or move below it depending on the layer order.

The basic responsive behavior of Absolute layers

Absolute layers work on a very simple responsive idea: they scales with the slider. If you make the slider bigger, the font sizes and images will grow larger. If you make the slider smaller, the text and images will shrink. This means the text can get tiny on mobile, and lose their legibility. Since the layers have no connection to each other, they’re likely to overlap.

Tools that help you create a responsive WordPress slider

Smart Slider 3 has many useful tools to make the most of the editing mode you’re using. You can use these tools to optimize your slide’s look for different devices. Let’s go through them so you can start creating your responsive WordPress slider.

1. Font size modifier

You can use the Font size modifier to adjust the font sizes for each device. For instance, if your texts shrink too much on mobile, you can make them bigger. This helps keep the texts legible on all devices.

Available in Free and Pro version
Layer position Absolute and Default
Use it to Increase or decrease the font size for each device

2. Hide on devices

When you create a responsive WordPress slider for desktops, you can add lots of layers. But on small screens you probably don’t need as many layers. Using the Hide on devices feature you can disable any layer which you don’t need on any particular device.

You can use this feature to optimize your content for mobile in several ways. As an example, you can remove long text layer, or images that are only for decoration. Do you use layer animations on your slides? Lots of animations can be resource-heavy for mobile phones. You can hide the desktop layers, which have the animation, and create new layers for mobile.

Available in Free and Pro version
Layer position Absolute and Default
Use it to Create device specific layers

3. Custom Slider size

Default layers can increase the size of the slider if your layers need more space. While you can set a custom slider size even if you have built your slide using Default layers, it’s not needed to create a proper layout. But if you’re working with Absolute layers, you might need to set custom slider sizes. The challenge here is finding the perfect size for your slider, which isn’t easy to figure out.

Available in Pro version
Layer position Absolute and Default
Use it to Increase the slider size for different devices

4. Link layers together

Using the layer linking feature, you can link an Absolute layer to another Absolute or a Default layer on the same level. Linked layers keep the same distance, so you can make sure the layer you link to another stays where you put it.

Available in Pro version
Layer position Absolute
Use it to Connect layers to each other

5. Nesting

You can place Absolute layers into Default rows and columns, which opens up many cool design possibilities. For instance, if you create a product slider you can up an “On sale” badge to the corder of the image by placing an Absolute layer above the Default image layer in the column where the image is.

Available in Free and Pro version
Layer position Absolute
Use it to Create stunning layouts

Summing up

Creating a beautiful responsive WordPress slider can be a challenging task. Luckily, you can make your job easier in several ways. If you plan your slider before you start working on it, you can save yourself from lots of trouble.

You should also work with Default layers, to reduce the time you need to spend editing your slides. For adding content, you shouldn’t use Absolute layers, unless you definitely need to work with such layers. In that case, try nesting your layers. In any case, using Default layers will save you from lots of trouble in the long run.

The post How to Create a Good Responsive WordPress Slider? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Do you need a Free Full Width Slider for your Site? https://smartslider3.com/blog/free-full-width-slider/ Wed, 06 May 2020 11:48:19 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=18144 People love sliders and they demand to have them on their sites. That might be the reason why the most popular WordPress themes use a full width slider as their banner. Sliders are great tools to show beautiful images to the visitor, when they arrive at your site. There are many slider plugins out there, […]

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People love sliders and they demand to have them on their sites. That might be the reason why the most popular WordPress themes use a full width slider as their banner. Sliders are great tools to show beautiful images to the visitor, when they arrive at your site. There are many slider plugins out there, both free and premium. Word has it that the best slider plugins are the premium ones. Today I want to show you a free full width slider plugin, which is as good as a premium one.

What is a full width slider?

Before we dig into the details, let’s learn what a full-width slider is. A full width slider is the kind of slider, that fills the horizontal area of the browser. But these sliders do not fill the height of the browser. Generally speaking, the height of the full width slider depends on the browser width. The wider the browser, the higher the slider, which makes it look amazing on today’s wide monitors. Speaking of which, it’s mandatory for any image slider to be responsive and look good on every device. A full width slider fulfills this purpose perfectly.

Free full width slider
Free full width slider

Meet Smart Slider 3: the best free full width slider plugin

Smart Slider 3 is the best rated free full width slider plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory. More than 800.000 happy users choose this free full width slider for their website. The slider looks and feels like a premium slider, but it’s totally free. What’s even more, it offers every option to create a beautiful responsive full width image slider. There are beautiful transitions to choose from, and the slides can autoplay. Smart Slider 3 is a responsive WordPress slider plugin, which you can use to enhance your site’s look.

Gradient slider
Gradient slider

Why should you choose Smart Slider 3 as your responsive slider plugin?

Smart Slider 3 has many options to make you want to call it your favorite slider plugin. Apart from being free, there are several reasons to choose it. It lets you create any layout you imagine. There’s also beautiful slider templates which help you get started. Do you need a simple image slider? Smart Slider 3 lets you create such sliders with ease. The best part is that Smart Slider 3 won’t let you down even if you need to add content to your slides.

Enrich your slider with content using layers

Every website has a story waiting to be told. If you use Smart Slider 3, you can tell this story using layers. You can create headings, add long paragraphs or buttons. Of course you can customize every layer to your liking. For instance, you can change the font color and size. If your site uses a specific font family, you can use that in the slider, too. You can edit your layers using a visual editor, so you don’t need any coding knowledge.

Fullwidth Slider
Fullwidth Slider

Love using rich media? Smart Slider 3 lets you add image and video layers, too. An image layer can be great to add icons or other design elements. Videos, of course, are very helpful to enrich your slider with visual content. You can add videos from YouTube and Vimeo to your slides. They have their own options to configure them to your liking. For instance, there’s an option to set a cover image or make the video autoplay.

Full width video slider
Full width video slider

Control your slider’s responsive look

Smart Slider 3 is a responsive slider, and lets you adjust your layers to each device. You can change the position of the layers and their spacing, too. This way you can ensure that the slides look great on every device. If you have textual layers, you can increase or decrease the font size to ensure legibility. Is your slider too crowded on small screens? You can hide any layer on any device to make some room.

Static Text Slider
Static Text Slider

How to create a free full width slider using Smart Slider 3?

While Smart Slider has lots of useful features, creating a full width slider is an easy task. First, click on New Project. Then select Create a New Project, where you can configure the basics of your project.

During the project creation process, you’ll need to enter a slider size. You need to do this to be able to work with the slide editor, and to set the dimensions of your slider. If you created a slider that wasn’t full width before, you can change this with a click of a button at the Size tab of its settings. Of course you can also change the size of the slider.

Create a project view

A good free full width slider plugin is feature packed. Smart Slider 3 has many useful options to further control the slider size. For instance, if you want to avoid that your slider gets too small, you can set up a Minimum slider height. Do you want to prevent your full width slider from getting too large on big screens? Use the Maximum slider height feature. If you use Smart Slider 3, best tools are at your fingertips to create a great free full width slider.

Create Beautiful full width Post sliders

Despite the fact that WordPress is no longer just a blogging platform, many people still use it for this reason. Blogs have great and interesting content, which is often featured on the homepage of the site. The best way to have many blog posts on the homepage is using a post slider. Smart Slider 3 is a great free full width slider plugin, which lets you create unique content for your site. This versatile slider has another great feature for you to use on your site. With Smart Slider 3, you have the ability to create a dynamic post slider.

Full-width Post Slider
Full width Post Slider

Compatible with every theme

Smart Slider 3 is compatible with every WordPress theme. You can use any widget position, the theme offers to display your full width slider. Of course, you can publish the slider to your posts or pages, too, using its shortcode. In addition, Smart Slider 3 supports the most popular page builder plugins available. If you use Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder or Page Builder by Site Origin, you don’t have to bother with shortcodes. You’ll find a special Smart Slider 3 module in your favourite page builder.

Full-width Product Slider
Full width Product Slider

Final thoughts

A good responsive slider is an essential part of every modern website. Whether you want a simple image slider, or a layer slider, Smart Slider 3 will help you achieve your goals. You’ll also love the responsive settings the slider offers. You can use them to create the perfect slider for every device. Why not give this free full width slider plugin a try?

The post Do you need a Free Full Width Slider for your Site? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

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