Articles in Template Tag — Blog — Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin

2024’s Biggest WordPress Design Trends to Follow

Sara Humenyanszky — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 06:00:02 +0000

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

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

New Slide Library Theme: Monolith

Sara Humenyanszky — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 07:51:37 +0000

At the time of writing, Smart Slider offers an impressive collection of over 170 unique slider templates. You can import them with just a single click, making the process of slider creation incredibly efficient. All these templates are fully customizable, granting you the freedom to edit every element they contain. You have the flexibility to replace the images with your own, modify demo text to align with your website’s content, and much more. Furthermore, you can easily add or remove layers as you see fit.

However, Smart Slider offers more than just ready-made sliders. In fact, it has a Slide Library, which offers slide templates. You can use these to create custom sliders or to add a new slide to your existing slider.

What is the Slide Library?

The Slide Library is actually very similar to the Template Library. The main difference is that you don’t import ready sliders, but you load one slide template at a time. This allows you to build each slide of your slider one by one. You can choose the next slide from the various categories.

The Slide Library contains 8 categories, and each of them contains 10 slides. That’s a ton of slides to choose from! The available categories are header, media, feature, content, testimonial, team, product, and number. For example, the header category contains slides that’ll help you create nice headers. Would you instead display your clients’ testimonials? Have a look at the Testimonial category to pick fitting designs.

Where to Find the Slide Library?

You can access the Slide Library at your slides. First, go to the Slide Editor by clicking on the slide thumbnail. Then, open the Add panel and go to the Library tab. Here you can select the theme you want to pick slides from and open the categories to browse the slides. To load a library slide to your currently edited slide, click on its thumbnail. Please note, that any content you had on the slide before it is overwritten.

Some slides are available in the Free version of Smart Slider. We have marked the Pro-only slides with a Pro badge. To be able to download these slides, you need to activate your Smart Slider Pro plan on your domain.

Introducing the New Slide Library Theme, Monolith

When we launched the Slide Library in 3.2 it contained one theme, Orion. Our goal with the Slide Library was to offer slides with matching designs. In addition, Orion had more than 100 slides like this, so it was a great start for the Slide Library. Today, I’m thrilled to introduce our latest addition to the Slide Library family, Monolith.

Explore Theme

This new theme elevates the Slide Library experience to new heights. Monolith’s slides boast a modern, unique, and colorful design that can effortlessly breathe life into your projects. In addition to expanding each library category with 10 fresh slides, Monolith also offers both dark and light themes for every slide, enhancing your creative possibilities.

New Slider Templates

To demonstrate the sheer power and versatility of the Slide Library, we’ve gone the extra mile by creating not one, but four remarkable templates. These templates are based on individual Slide Library templates, showcasing the stunning capabilities of the Monolith theme.

New Slider Template – Monolith Full Slider

Prepare for a visual spectacle like no other with the Monolith Full Slider. It’s not just a slider; it’s a dynamic canvas for showcasing your content with bold flair. With its sleek design and smooth transitions, this slider template isn’t just about conveying your brand identity; it’s about immersing your audience in an unforgettable visual journey right from the very first slide. Ignite curiosity, captivate, and leave a mark.

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New Slider Template – Monolith Boxed Slider

Elevate your website’s charm and captivate visitors with the Monolith Boxed Slider template. This isn’t just a slider; it’s a gateway to a dazzling experience. Its contemporary design and dynamic content will leave your audience spellbound, ensuring your message resonates long after they’ve left your site.

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New Slider Template – Office Exercises

Prepare to be wowed by the exceptional Office Exercises slider template. It’s not just a collection of images; it’s a symphony of stunning visuals and seamless animations that beckon busy professionals to prioritize their well-being. This slider isn’t just about conveying information; it’s about sparking inspiration. With every slide, you’ll captivate your visitors, promote healthier lifestyles, and ensure your content shines brightly.

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Conclusion

All things considered, the Template Sliders feature serves as your shortcut to crafting stunning sliders, blocks, or pages in a flash. And guess what? Smart Slider is growing, which means we keep adding more and more ready-made templates just for you.

In addition, with Monolith by your side, you can turn your creative visions into reality in no time at all. Welcome to a world of endless possibilities with Smart Slider’s Slide Library and the Monolith theme!

The post New Slide Library Theme: Monolith appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

How to Use Background Color and Images in Smart Slider 3

Sara Humenyanszky — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 06:00:33 +0000

Welcome to the fascinating world of sliders! You’ve come to the right place if you are a WordPress lover wanting to add life to your website. This in-depth blog post will explore the captivating world of background colors and images in Smart Slider 3, a slider plugin that will advance your design skills.

We all know that visuals are everything in this digital world. Additionally, when it comes to sliders the background color and images are crucial to designing captivating interfaces. Not to mention that with Smart Slider 3, you have the resources at your fingertips, so you can easily turn your sliders into engaging displays.

This article will guide you through your slider building process with useful tips and tricks on background color and images. What’s more, we’ll address your burning questions, including how to apply background images, change background colors, and even consider the best background color options for your images. So prepare to unleash your imagination and bring out the best in your sliders!

📚 Table of contents

✏️ Changing Background Color
🎓 Working with Background Images
⚡ Choosing the Right Background Color for Images
💻 Setting Custom Background Images
💡 Conclusion

Changing Background Color

Are you prepared to add a splash of color to your sliders? You can easily modify the background color in Smart Slider 3 by following the instructions in this section. In addition, you can create the ideal settings for your slides thanks to its simple user-friendly interface.

How to Change Background Color

Let’s go through each step of changing the background color in Smart Slider 3:

Log in to your dashboard and find the Smart Slider 3 plugin. Then, open an existing slider or make a new one to edit.
Now there are two ways to accomplish it. You can either set the background color of your whole slider. Or simply change the color of each slide separately to your preferred one.

First, let’s look at how to set it for all of your slides in one setting:

Find the “General” settings of your slide.
Scroll to the bottom of it and there look through the “Slider Design” section.
The “Background Color” option allows you to set a background color for the slider, which will be behind all slides. However, note that this option is only visible if there’s a background image set.

Now let’s move on to how to set a background color for individual slides:

Select the slide you would like to edit, once you are in the slide editor. Then, on the right side, look for the slide settings panel.
In the Style tab find the “Background” section. There are 3 options to choose from, but as we want to set the background color of the slide, we’ll choose the color option, which is shown as the brush icon.
There are several ways to choose a color in Smart Slider 3. To get the ideal shade you can use the color picker tool, enter your HEX code, or select a color from the color palette.
And finally, you just need to click on your selected color and voilá! Your slide’s background color will be instantly updated.
In addition, you can add a gradient to your slider background, and choose its direction to make the color pop.

Applying Background Color

Now that you got the basics of changing the background color covered, let’s take a closer look at how you can use it effectively to make your sliders stand out:

Maintain consistency: Stick to the same color throughout your slides to ensure that your visitors have a consistent and visually appealing experience.
Contrast between your background color and your content: Make sure that the text on your slides and other layers can be easily read against the background color.

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Experiment with different background colors: Don’t be afraid to try different background colors on your slides to get the look and feel you are looking for. With Smart Slider 3, you can preview your changes in real time. Remember that your background color defines the tone and mood of your slider, it’s important to take your time and experiment with them.

In the next part, we’ll explore background images and how they can take your sliders to the next level.

Working with Background Images

Not only do you have background colors, but background images also have the power to turn your sliders into amazing visual experiences. Let’s take a closer look at how you can set up custom background images, make them transparent, and take advantage of Smart Slider 3’s unique features.

Setting a Custom Background Image

Here’s how you can set up your own custom background images with Smart Slider 3:

Just like it was mentioned above, there are also two ways to add a background image to your slider.
First, let’s look at how to set the whole slider’s background. You just need to navigate to the General Settings tab, and right next to the Background Color, there’s a section for the Slider Background Image. Here you can upload your chosen image.
The second option is to set different images for each slide. To accomplish it you need to select the slide you would like to modify. Then, just like you did it before, find the Background section in the Style settings tab. After, clicking on the image icon you can upload your image file. Play around with the additional image settings to see what works for you best.
Finally, when you are done with setting up your background image, don’t forget to preview the changes, then if you are satisfied with the result, save them.

Using Images as Backgrounds

If you want to make your sliders look amazing, you can use background images to add depth and interest. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of them:

Relevant images: Select images that match your content and message. Think about the color scheme, subject matter, and mood.

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Stick to the same style throughout your slider. This will help create a consistent visual experience.

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Text readability: Make sure that the text (and other slide elements) are easy to read against the background image.

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Experiment with Smart Slider 3’s editing features, like opacity and blur effect, to get the best results. By applying these tips, you can make your background images look amazing and captivating.

Choosing the Right Background Color for Images

The color of the background of your sliders can have a big impact on how people perceive your images. Let’s take a look at some things you need to know and some tips on how to choose the background color for your sliders.

Exploring Color Psychology

What is color psychology? Color psychology is the study of how emotions and perceptions are influenced by the color of the environment.

Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing the background color for your images:

Warm Colors: Warm colors, such as red, orange, and yellow, evoke feelings of excitement, energy, and passion. These colors work well for images that are dynamic and vibrant, such as adventures and celebrations.
Cool Colors: Cool colors, such as blue, green, and purple, evoke feelings of calm and serenity. These colors are great for images that show serenity, and nature.

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Neutral Colors: Neutral colors, such as white, gray, and beige, provide a clean, minimalist background. These colors can be used for a variety of images. They are timeless and versatile.

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It’s important to note that everyone’s perception of color is different, so take into account the context and your target audience when selecting background colors for your images.

White or Black Background: Which is Better?

What’s the difference between a white background and a black background? It’s a never-ending discussion. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but ultimately, it comes down to your content and what you want it to look like.

Here’s what you need to know about them:

White Background: A white background looks clean and classic. It adds brightness and contrast to your images, making them look lively and interesting. It’s often used for product photography to highlight details.

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Black Background: A black background adds depth and a dramatic effect to your images, especially for high-contrast or moody photos. They are commonly used in artistic and fashion photography.

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At the end of the day, it all comes down to the style and intent of your sliders and the images you want to emphasize.

Setting Custom Background Images

Smart Slider 3 has one of the most amazing features: the ability to customize your slider’s background images. This means that you can add your own unique style and branding to the sliders!

How to Set a Custom Background Image

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

Upload an image in either of the two ways we mentioned above (you can set the background for the whole slide, or individually). You can choose the image from your media library or upload a new one.
Once you upload the image, you have several options to adjust the display of the image. You can change the size, position, etc.
Always make sure to preview your changes, then if needed, make necessary adjustments. If you are done, save your design.

Making the Background Image Transparent

Sometimes you might want to make your background images transparent, allowing the content and other elements to seamlessly blend with the webpage. Smart Slider 3 makes this possible with a few simple steps:

Open the slide you want to edit, then in the Style tab find the “Background” section.
If you’ve already uploaded an image then you will easily find the Opacity option. On the other hand, if you haven’t yet, then that should be your next step.
You can either toggle the Opacity bar or write the value you would like to receive. This will make the background image transparent. To add an overlay, use a color with the opacity setting.
The same happens if you turn on “Overlay” and select a partially transparent background color.
Experiment with it and adjust it to your preferences, to find the perfect balance between readability and engaging visual effect.
Then finally, take a moment to preview your slide to make sure the transparent background looks exactly how you want it. Once you are happy with the effect, save your changes.

To create a one-of-a-kind experience for your viewers, customize your background images and experiment with the different effects Smart Slider 3 offers its users.

Conclusion

It’s time to take your sliders to the next level! And Smart Slider 3 is here to give you all the flexibility and creativity you need to make your background color and images stand out from the crowd.

Whether you are looking for a vibrant and colorful display, a clean and minimalistic look, or anything in between. You will find everything you need to take your vision to the next level. What’s more, it’s a powerful tool that can help you turn your ordinary sliders into extraordinary ones.

Why not download or try it out and see what it’s all about?

The post How to Use Background Color and Images in Smart Slider 3 appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

Digital Product Design: Made Easy with Smart Slider

Sara Humenyanszky — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 06:55:38 +0000

Today, user experience is indispensable, and creating visually captivating products is essential to grab the attention of your target audience. According to current data, 89% of consumers switch to a competitor’s website as a result of a bad user experience. Since you have the ability to influence how users engage with your platforms as a digital product designer, why wouldn’t you take the most advantage of what it offers?

📚 Table of contents

💻 What is Digital Product Design?
⚡ The Role of Smart Slider 3 in Digital Product Design
🎓 How to Design a Digital Product with Smart Slider 3
💡 Conclusion

What is Digital Product Design?

Digital product design, to put it simply, is the art and science of creating digital products that both satisfy the consumers’ needs and expectations. It entails a strategy that takes a product’s aesthetics and functionality into account aiming to offer a seamless user experience.

There are many different types of digital products, including all types of platforms. Each of these products is made to add value and address the specific needs of users.

It is your responsibility as a digital product designer to ensure that the final product is in line with the users’ expectations and goals and to close the gap between technology and user demands. You are in charge of doing user research, getting to know the target audience, and incorporating your findings into considerate design choices.

The user-centered design philosophy is the main aspect of digital product design. This means that the significance of user involvement is emphasized throughout the whole design process. Even from the early research to prototyping and testing. You develop products that meet users’ demands and offer useful solutions, as you are studying their motives, habits, and pain points.

What Steps Does a Good Digital Product Require?

Research and User Analysis: Perform in-depth analysis to learn more about your target audience’s habits, likes, and objectives. User interviews, surveys, and competitor analysis fall under this category.
Goals and Objectives: Clearly establish the goals and objectives of your digital product while designing. It aids in directing the design procedure and guarantees that the design choices are in line with the anticipated results.
Create User Personas and User Journeys: To better understand the needs, motives, and pain points of your target audience, create user personas for them. Moreover, user journeys show the steps your consumers take to get in contact with your product. This helps you spot areas that may need improvement.
Use Prototypes: To visualize the functionality and structure of your digital product. Before moving on to the visual design stage reassess and improve the overall design.
Integrate Visual Components: This includes typography, color schemes, and images to produce a visually appealing and combined design. Pay close attention to the small details that improve visual hierarchy, legibility, and usability.
User Flows and Interaction Design: Create simple and smooth interactions that lead users through the product. Put your efforts into developing intuitive navigation, engaging interactions, and a responsive UI that adjusts to various devices.

Long story short, you can produce digital products that exceed user expectations by following these steps, which will lead to improved user satisfaction and higher engagement.

The Role of Smart Slider 3 in Digital Product Design

As we are done with establishing the significance of digital product design, let’s turn our attention to Smart Slider 3. It’s an impressive WordPress slider plugin that can seriously improve your efforts in this area. So get ready for the adventure that will transform the way you think about designing digital products.

Smart Slider 3 and Its Features

With the help of this flexible and user-friendly WordPress plugin, designers and developers can make eye-catching and engaging sliders for their websites. All the tools you need to captivate your audience and improve user experience are available with Smart Slider 3. All thanks to its user-friendly UI and its variety of capabilities.

Smart Slider’s primary features include:

Drag-and-Drop Editor and Layers: Smart Slider 3 provides a drag-and-drop editor that makes it easier to create and customize sliders. You can add and organize many unique layers, such as text, images, videos, and others with ease to create the layout that you want.
Responsive Design: Smart Slider 3 helps you ensure that your sliders look amazing on all platforms by changing the layout and design to fit various screen sizes. In today’s mobile-centric world, when visitors access your website from a variety of devices, responsiveness is essential.
Animations and Effects: Add some eye-catching effects to your sliders to make them more engaging. With the numerous pre-built animations Smart Slider 3 offers, you can add motion to each layer to create a better interface.

Template Library: There’s no need to worry if you are just starting out with Smart Slider 3 as they provide their users with an extensive library full of skillfully designed templates. So you can get a headstart and some guidance in your design process, they offer various templates in different styles, targeting different purposes.

Available templates in Smart Slider 3

Benefits of Using Smart Slider 3 for Digital Product Design

Let’s look at some of the main benefits Smart Slider 3 offers to make your digital product design easier and more fun.

Increases Visual Appeal: You can design visually appealing sliders with Smart Slider 3 that capture the users’ attention and make a lasting impression. You can improve the aesthetics of your products by including interesting images, layers, animations, and effects.

Better User Engagement: Sliders made with Smart Slider can interact with users and effectively make them engage. You can direct customers’ attention and entice them to explore further by strategically placing call-to-action buttons, emphasizing essential features, or displaying products.

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Seamlessly Works with WordPress: WordPress is the most widely used content management system (CMS) in the world, and Smart Slider 3 works with it without a hitch. You can quickly build and manage sliders on your WordPress-powered websites, saving you time and effort.
Efficiency in Terms of Time and Money: By using the drag-and-drop editor and the pre-made templates in Smart Slider 3, you can lower development costs and advance the design process. Without much coding and design expertise, you can easily create eye-catching sliders thanks to the user-friendly interface and ready-to-use layers.

Examples of Successful Digital Product Design in Smart Slider 3

Let’s look at some actual cases of successful digital products that were using this WordPress plugin to fully demonstrate the influence of Smart Slider 3 on digital product design.

Full-Width Product Carousel

A Full-Width Product Carousel’s main objective is to present the products in an appealing way to the eye. However, by utilizing Smart Slider 3 to improve its appearance, it goes beyond a simple product display. Additional capabilities offered by Smart Slider 3 enhance the carousel’s appearance, not to mention that other product-related material can be highlighted. So, emphasizing product names, promoting discounts, and offering other product-related materials are easily included.

With Smart Slider 3, the Full-Width Product Carousel delivers a dynamic and engaging experience, while additionally providing an effective way to present items. This makes it a beneficial tool for online product promotion.

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Post Slider Carousel

This digital product is a Post Slider Carousel, which uses a dynamic slider structure to display the most recent or primary content. This product’s design has been perfected with Smart Slider 3. This way it acquires more features with stunning design options. The content can be presented with the carousel slider type, which leads to an engaging user experience.

With the help of this plugin, the digital product can efficiently and aesthetically present the most important or recent posts, grabbing the users’ attention and encouraging them to explore and interact with the material.

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Real Estate Slider

The Real Estate slider mixes outstanding visual effects with a minimalistic appearance. It is intended mostly for portfolio or real estate websites. Its design has been significantly based on the unique design capabilities of Smart Slider 3. This slider provides an aesthetically pleasing layout, grabbing users’ attention.

Moreover, Smart Slider makes it possible to incorporate stunning effects that give the slider a feeling of energy and beauty.

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Logo Carousel

The Logo Carousel is used to highlight sponsors, partners, or clients. Its goal is to present logos in a fun and interesting way. The layout, transitions, and animation options are flexible, enabling you to shape it to your liking with Smart Slider 3.

It’s a very powerful tool for highlighting or promoting the brands connected to a company or organization, increasing their visibility, and establishing collaborations.

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Instagram Carousel

Users can make stunning carousels out of their Instagram photos with the Instagram Carousel. They can easily present their posts from Instagram and make eye-catching carousels, all thanks to Smart Slider 3’s flawless functionalities. The various design options enable them to create captivating carousels that display their Instagram material in an enticing way. It’s an effective tool for social media marketing and content promotion.

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Showcase Portfolio

With the Showcase Portfolio slider, users can present their portfolio pieces in an interactive way. Its design provides a visually captivating approach to highlight projects and creative work. They can take advantage of Smart Slider’s versatility to create alluring portfolio sliders. It offers a variety of design options to exhibit portfolio items in an engaging way. Artists, designers, and professionals can use this slider to display their projects and make an impact on visitors.

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Politician Slider

The Politician slider introduces visitors to the company and its objectives. Regardless of one’s political background, it offers an appealing and professional look. Besides, it integrates powerful design elements and popular effects to make sure that the objectives or the company are presented in a memorable way. This slider is a useful tool for people or companies who are trying to successfully deliver their message and make an impact on visitors.

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Testimonial Thumbnail

The Testimonial Thumbnail slider uses visuals, particularly brand logos, to increase credibility and trust with visitors. These are efficiently displayed using thumbnails. Just like all the other products, this one as well is perfected by Smart Slider 3’s features.

Users can make an interactive and eye-catching slider that displays the logos of businesses they have collaborated with. Potential customers feel more confident in the company or individual as a result of this demonstration of reliable partnerships.

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These examples show the adaptability and influence of the plugin in producing interesting and beautiful sliders by integrating it into the digital product design workflows.

We’ll go into detail about utilizing Smart Slider 3 to develop a digital product in the following part. From the installation and customization to the optimization of your slider, we’ll provide you with some additional tips to support you on this journey. So let’s dive in!

How to Design a Digital Product with Smart Slider 3

As we have already covered the benefits of using Smart Slider 3 for digital product design, let’s go through the actual steps we have to take in order to leverage its power in designing stunning and effective sliders for your own digital products. Let’s take a closer look at the process, from installation to optimization.

Installing and Setting Up Smart Slider in WordPress

Firstly, log in to your WordPress dashboard.
Then, in the “Plugins” section, you can find the “Add New” option, click on it.
Find Smart Slider 3 in the search.
Then, select the “Install Now” option.
And lastly, when it’s done with the installation click on “Activate”.

As soon as it has been activated you can find Smart Slider in the sidebar menu of your WordPress dashboard.

Exploring Customization Possibilities

Create a New Slider: From the Smart Slider 3 menu, select “New Project” to start creating your slider.
Select a Template: Smart Slider 3 provides a large selection of unique templates to help you get started on your design. Then choose one from the library that fits the objectives and style of your digital product.
Add Layers: After selecting a template, you can take advantage of Smart Slider 3’s layer capabilities. You can easily add images, buttons, and other interactive features.
Customize the Layers: Then, you can start customizing the slide elements. Simply click on a layer and edit it, apply animations, adjust styling, or add new layers as needed.
Setup Slider Settings: Smart Slider 3 offers a number of possibilities for setting up your slider’s behavior and appearance. To fine-tune your design, consider choices like navigation controls, effects, timing, autoplay, and responsiveness.

Pre-designed Templates for Quick and Effective Design

A variety of pre-designed templates that are serving various industries and design aesthetics are available in the template library of Smart Slider 3. These templates are professionally designed and are fully engagement-focused.

Look through the template library and choose the one that most closely matches the goal and target audience of your digital product. You can edit a template after you’ve imported it so that it complements your branding and content. Create a customized and one-of-a-kind slider by changing the text, swapping out the images, and playing around with the design elements.

Optimizing the Slider for Responsiveness and Performance

Make Sure Your Slider is Responsive: With the growing use of mobile devices, this is essential. The layout and sizing can be easily changed in Smart Slider 3 to fit different screen sizes. To make sure your slider looks amazing on all devices, preview it.

Reduce Image Sizes: The performance of your digital product can suffer from large image file sizes. To guarantee that your sliders load quickly without compromising image quality, use Smart Slider’s image optimization techniques.

Test and Improve: Thoroughly test your sliders on a variety of browsers and devices before publishing your digital product. Look for any performance, responsiveness, or functionality issues with the slider. Make the necessary changes to ensure a seamless user experience.

Conclusion

To sum it up, Smart Slider 3 is a game-changer for digital product design. You can undoubtedly elevate your designs to new heights and create appealing and engaging sliders. In addition, using this WordPress plugin in your workflow improves the overall user experience.

Without the need for in-depth coding or design knowledge, Smart Slider’s user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, responsive design features, animation effects, and template collection enable you to create aesthetically pleasing and engaging sliders. It works smoothly, making it simple to manage and optimize your website’s sliders.

While you are using Smart Slider 3 to make your digital product come to life, keep in mind to focus on a user-centered approach. So perform research, establish clear goals, and don’t leave out the wireframing and prototype stages.

All in all, by implementing Smart Slider 3, you can enhance your digital products’ design, increase user engagement, and provide unique experiences across various devices. So why wait?

The post Digital Product Design: Made Easy with Smart Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

How to Customize a Slider Template?

Ramona Nemeth-Csoka — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 07:00:39 +0000

There’s one thing most people do when they’re about to create a new slider. They look at slider templates and see if they can find anything they can use. Generally, this means the template needs to fulfill two criteria. First, it’s topic needs to match the topic of the site. Second, it needs to look appealing for the site owner.

It’s a common misconception that the template you choose must have the same topic as your site. You can actually choose any template you like. In fact, with Smart Slider you can completely customize any template you import. As a result, you can create a slider for your site’s topic from a template that’s totally different. So, you’re free to choose from any of our templates.

How to choose a slider template for your site?

What you should consider when you choose a template is which one helps convey your message best. For example, if your message is text based, your best bet is choosing a slider template that has lots of text. However, if your goal is to use lots of images to help deliver the message, you should pick an image heavy slider instead.

The most important thing you should keep in mind is that you can customize the template. Basically, after you import a template, you can edit it the same way as you’d edit a slide you created. If your site uses a different color scheme than what the template you like does, you can replace them with yours. Does the template use images which are completely different from your site’s topic? No problem, you can upload yours. Additionally, you can replace texts, or even remove some layers you don’t need.

What do we want to create?

Let’s say we want to create a landing page for a political themed website using sliders. We need four main sections. One to display the campaign issues and another for the political manifesto. Then we need one for the campaign staff and to call for volunteers. And, of course, it would be useful to have some kind of navigation and a captivating header. A good quote can always strengthen the message of a political website. So it would be great to find a template where we can insert one. All in all, we need 6 sliders or blocks for our politician themed slider.

In this article we’ll show you how to create this political themed slider from another template. In fact, you can find a detailed video tutorial below what you can follow. Additionally, you can find the template ready for use amongst our template sliders.

What kind of sliders do we need?

The campaign issues section needs to showcase three issues. They are the following: senior care, public safety and environment protection. Each issue has a short description and a link to its dedicated page. So, we need a slider that can display these three elements in a nice way.

The manifesto section will display the biography of the political party. So it will be more text heavy, but if the template has an image, that’s also nice.

The campaign staff consists of 8 members. We want to display their name and occupation and also a picture so voters can familiarize with them. So, we need a slider that helps us display so many images in a nice layout.

Last but not least, the call for volunteers section. Here the most important thing we need is a CTA button, and of course a headline. There’s not much else we need here, so probably this would be the simplest section to find a slider for.

Finding the perfect sliders to start from

As mentioned earlier, you can change any template to your liking and to match your niche. We decided to use the Iceland Adventure template as the base of our political template. It has everything we need: a menu, a nice header and a block for each section we want to build. In fact, it has two extra sliders that you’re free to remove. Let’s go through each slider to see what we are going to build and what is our starting point.

1. Header section

The header section contains a menu and a hero block. It’s similar to the original header, which also contains a menu, which we kept for the Political page. However, we removed the video lightbox from the hero as we didn’t need that. Additionally, we replaced the original slider’s Shape Divider with a row. This row is another navigation element for the new page.

Additionally, the new hero has some cool effects. For example, it has a background parallax. Also, the button has a nice incoming animation to bring attention to it. While the original Iceland Adventures template had layer animations, too, they were present on all layers. So, the layer animations highlighted all layers, as opposed to focusing on one.

2. Issues section

The block under the header displays the campaign issues. We gave the original layout a main and a subheading and also some box shadow on the columns. A major change here is adding a box shadow to each column, which serves two purposes. First, it helps to present the columns. Second, it gives a nice hover effect by making the shadow darker on mouse enter.

3. Quote section

The Iceland Adventure’s quote block is a bit more fancy than what we wanted for this template. So, we removed the original template’s background video. Instead, we decided to create a single but more subtle design element. Then we set a white color as the slide background and added a solid green color behind the content. Then we replaced the avatar with a quote image.

4. Manifesto section

We changed a lot of things in this block. In fact, it barely resembles the original block at all. What did we do? First, we adjusted where (and how) the layers that are in Absolute position appear. Second, we removed the background image. Third we added a main and a subheading to this block as well.

5. Staff section

The changes on this block don’t seem to be too significant. Nevertheless, we had to make a lot of major changes. For example, the images in the original block are the background images of the column. However, for the Political template we rather used image layers to display them. The reason it was important to use image layers is because we needed the texts to be below the image.

6. Volunteer

The last section we wanted to have was a way to display a call for volunteers. So, we needed a template with a nice CTA button on it. The final section in the Iceland Adventure template is a slider which seemed perfect for this. However, it’s a slider with three sliders and we actually only need a single slide. So we decided to remove two slides from this slider. Finally, added the Ken Burns effect to the block to make it more outstanding.

Finishing touches

Once all sliders are ready the last thing to do is to set up the navigation. You can use the Slider Alias for the navigation and it’s easy to set it up.

First, you need to set up a unique alias for four sliders: Campaign issues, Manifesto, Staff and Contribute. When you’re done go to the Menu slider and select the first menu item. At its Link option click on the plus icon, go to the Actions tab and choose Scroll to Alias. Finally, enter the Alias you set at the Campaign slider. Repeat these with the other 3 sliders.

How to transform the Iceland Adventure to a political template?

We created a step-by-step tutorial video to show the full process of the transformation. In the video you can see how to customize the layers, edit your content and create an amazing end result. You can watch the video below:

Conclusion

Although Smart Slider has more than 150 templates, it’s possible you won’t find one matching your site’s topic. But don’t worry even if you don’t find a matching slider. You can completely customize any Smart Slider template you import. Even if its topic is not the same as your site’s, you can make any changes to make the template fit. As a result, you can actually use any template you like on your website and modify it to fit your site’s topic.

The post How to Customize a Slider Template? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

New Slide Library Theme: Nala

Ramona Nemeth-Csoka — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 06:39:33 +0000

At the time of writing, Smart Slider offers more than 150 gorgeous slider templates. You can import them by one click and they let you create sliders fast. All templates are fully customizable, which means you can edit anything we added to them. You can replace the images to your own ones, edit the demo text to your site’s and so on. Additionally, you can add or remove layers as you see fit.

But Smart Slider offers more than just ready made sliders. In fact, it has a Slide Library, which offers slide templates. You can use these to create custom sliders, or to add a new slide to your existing slider.

What is the Slide Library?

The Slide Library contains 8 categories, and each of them contains 10 slides. That’s a ton of slides to choose from! The available categories are: header, media, feature, content, testimonial, team, product and number. For example, the header category contains slides that’ll help you create nice headers. Would you rather display your clients’ testimonials? Have a look at the Testimonial category to pick fitting designs.

Where to find the Slide Library?

You can access the Slide Library at your slides. First, go to the Slide Editor by clicking on the slide thumbnail. Then, open the Add panel and go to the Library tab. Here you can select the theme you want to pick slides from and open the categories to browse the slides. To load a library slide to your currently edited slide, click on its thumbnail. Please note: any content you had on the slide before it is overwritten.

Some slides are available in the Free version of Smart Slider. We have marked the Pro only slides with a Pro badge. To be able to download these slides, you need to to activate your Smart Slider pro plan on your domain.

Introducing the new Slide library theme, Nala

When we launched the Slide Library in 3.2 it contained one theme, Orion. Our goal with the Slide Library was to offer slides with matching designs. Orion had more than 100 slides like this, so it was a great start for the Slide Library. Today I’m happy to introduce our new Slide library theme, Nala.

Explore Theme

Nala is a new theme that brings the Slide Library to the next level. It features slides that look super modern, unique and colorful. Additionally, it’s easy to match these slides and create unique designs. Nala adds 10 slides to each library category. Additionally, it offers a dark and light theme for every slide.

New slider templates

To show you the power and possibilities of the Slide Library, we created not one but four new templates. They are based on individual Slide Library templates. So, they’re great to display how gorgeous the Nala theme is.

New slider template – Nala Page Dark

The Nala Page Dark template is a gorgeous dark landing page. It uses an orangish color for highlight which looks spectacular. Layer animations and Shape Dividers make it more interesting for visitors.

Nala Page Dark – New Slider Group Template

New slider template – Nala Page Light

The Nala Page Light template is a clean and modern landing page. It features gorgeous images, cool layer animations and Shape Dividers. Additionally, it’s highlight color is blue which makes it perfect for any business.

Nala Page Light – New Slider Group Template

New slider template – Nala Fullpage

The Nala Fullpage template is the perfect hero for your site. It’s a full page slider so it’ll have plenty of space to captivate your visitors.

Nala Fullpage – New Slider Template

New slider template – Nala Showcase

The Nala Showcase template the perfect choice for you if you’re looking for an interesting way to tell your story. It looks amazing and offers plenty of slides to display amazing content.

Nala Showcase – New Slider Template

Conclusion

The Template Sliders are one of Smart Slider’s most powerful features. They let you create gorgeous sliders, blocks or pages quickly. As Smart Slider keeps growing, we can offer more and more ready-made templates for our users. The new Slide Library theme is a great addition to Smart Slider and it will help you build stunning modern slides in no time.

The post New Slide Library Theme: Nala appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

10 Stunning Business Templates for Your Website

Ramona Nemeth-Csoka — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 07:38:24 +0000

SThe Internet is one of today’s best marketing platforms. That’s because people spend more time on their phones (or computers) than watching TV. Just take a look at people who use public transport: most of them are on their phones. So, the Internet is where most people can see advertisements or just to find things. As a result, you can reach more people online than offline.

Why does your business need a website?

If your business does not have a website, you give your competitors a huge advantage. See, people check out businesses they want to work with, or purchase from. But if your business has no website, your potential customers can’t find you and can’t check you out. So, they will not consider doing any business with you. This can make you lose potential revenue.

If you’re selling goods, you consider having a website even more. Especially a website that allows people to order stuff online. In the past few years online shopping has grown fast. In fact, the global online shopping market size nearly hit 4 trillion in 2020. So, allowing people to buy online opens up new business opportunities for you.

What makes a good website?

A good website helps your business reach more potential customers. It’s optimized for SEO to help customers find you using their favorite search engine. A good website also lets you showcase your products or services in great detail. For example, you can describe them with text, images or videos. Potential customers like to check the details of a product before spending money. So, having lots of videos, images and text can be very convincing.

Additionally, a good business website also helps you connect with your customers. Generally, it offers a contact form, which visitors can use to ask pre-sales questions. Additionally, it provides you a way to handle any kind of user feedback.

Why should you use business templates

Creating a good looking page is not easy, especially if you don’t have an eye for design. This is where templates come into play. Templates are ready to use websites, sliders or blocks. In fact, generally they are made by designers, so they look great. Additionally, you can easily add them to your website. For example, importing a template using Smart Slider is a one click process. Then you can customize it to match your business’ needs.

Not only do business templates help create tasteful sites, but they also speed up the building process. Creating a good looking block or slider from scratch can take lots of time. It can involve some trial and error to get things right. Additionally, you might decide you don’t like the end result. When you use a template, you know exactly how things will look in the end. They’re also huge time savers, as you don’t have to build them from scratch.

10 business template examples for inspiration

Do you need a good looking business template? I’ve collected 10 beautiful templates for you to choose from. They’re great sources of inspiration on your journey to create a business template. Additionally, you can import them into Smart Slider pro with one click. Furthermore, you can change them in any way after the import. For example, you can replace the images, change the colors and the text.

1. Agency

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The Agency is one of the best business templates you can find. It’s a one page template, which means it contains several blocks. Thus, it has plenty of sections to introduce your business properly. You can use the header section to introduce your business in a way that people will want to scroll below. Then you can introduce your services to encourage people to work with you. Additionally, there’s a section to showcase client logos.

2. Advertising Agency

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This template helps you create a stunning, modern section for your business website. It has powerful visual tools, like a video, to introduce your business to your visitors. Apart from being attractive, it’s also super refreshing to see.

3. Bakery

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Here’s another one page business template for you to check out. It introduces a bakery, but it’s suitable to introduce any other business. The template starts with a menu, followed by a slider that shows the best products. If you like it, don’t hesitate to use it!

4. Gym Slider

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Sliders are great to help you save space on your site. They act like a container and group similar content into one section. Thus, the Gym Slider is a great way to introduce your services.

5. Split Slider

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If you’re looking for a business template that dresses to impress, you’ve found the perfect template. This slider will help you introduce your projects and services in a stunning way.

6. Blogger

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You don’t have to be a blogger to take advantage of the Blogger one page template. But it’s a great starting business template because it has lots of features businesses need. First, there’s a nice header and a menu for navigation. Then there’s a slider that you can use in many ways. It can display your latest blog posts, your products or your services. Finally, there are nice sections to introduce every part of your business.

7. Conference

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Nowadays most websites are full width. So, if you want to stand out from the crowd, you should consider creating a non-full width website. The Conference is a boxed business template, which you can change to your heart’s content. Currently it showcases a conference, but you can use it for any other purposes. For example, you can adjust it to fit a photography website.

8. Full Page Hotel

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This template is super useful for real estate websites. Currently it presents three different hotels. However, if you need to display more content, you can duplicate any of the existing slides. Then, just replace the demo content with your own. After that your beautiful, full page business template slider will be ready to use.

9. Ken Burns

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How cool would it be to introduce your business in one single template slider? Well, this template helps you do just that. It’s a simple slider with 3 slides, and each of them is dedicated to display a different part of your business.

10. Hero Slider

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This hero slider is a business template that makes sure your visitors learn about your latest work before they scroll. It’s especially useful for agencies that do presentable work. But if you prefer, you can always add your services instead.

Conclusion

People browse a lot. They use the Internet to connect with their friends and to discover new things. This includes new shops where they can buy things from. But they can also find new companies to do business with. So, a good online presence is important to gain more customers and build a brand. Luckily, nowadays it’s easy to have a website. In fact, you can start from a great looking business template.

The post 10 Stunning Business Templates for Your Website appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

10 Creative Template Ideas to Enrich Your Website

Ramona Nemeth-Csoka — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 10:00:52 +0000

One of the most challenging parts of web design is to create something fresh looking. Something that will not look like every other website. Yet, the design needs to feel similar, to allow easy navigation through the page. So, how do you create something that’s unique yet familiar? By channeling your creativity and designing a creative template.

What makes a template creative?

A creative template helps to make the website unique and exciting. Common practices of creative design are making things interactive. For example, elements animating when the mouse is over them, or when the visitor scrolls. An interactive design helps to make sure that the visitor is not a passive viewer. Instead, they become active participants of your website.

Another creative tool is using custom and original illustrations. Illustrations, especially if they’re unique, help establish your brand. In other words, they help visitors recognize you more easily. So, it’s worth enriching your creative template with them.

You can also showcase your creativity with your font choices. For example, you can use an unusual font family to display certain parts of your content. Fonts are important, because they’re responsible for displaying your texts. For this reason, you need to choose them carefully and pay attention to legibility. It doesn’t matter how good your copy is if the font makes it hard to read. So, you should choose a more traditional font for long texts. However, an unusual font at the headings and buttons can have a positive effect.

Use colors to look creative

You can’t create a creative template using plain and simple colors, like black and white. You need to use more vibrant colors, which also look great together. There are many awesome online tools that help you generate a good looking color palette. Some of the best are:

mycolor.space: simply type in a HEX color and hit Generate. You’ll get lots of cool color palettes to work with.
canva.com: Canva offers many ready made color palettes to choose from. However, if you want to use a specific color, it can generate matching colors for you.
coolors.co: Choose from a bunch of ready made color palettes, or have Coolors generate one for you.

10 creative template examples for inspiration

Are you ready to get some creative inspiration? We’ve collected 10 super creative templates for you. They can help you give the necessary inspiration to create your own creative site. If you don’t like starting from scratch, that’s okay, too. You can import these templates to Smart Slider 3 Pro and fine-tune them to your needs.

1. Digital Art

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What’s so creative about the Digital Art template? First, it uses gorgeous digital illustrations, which make the template look creative. Second, it’s interactive. Hovering on any images brings up information about that picture. This interactivity is creative and also allows enjoying the picture in full.

2. Banking App

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The Banking App is a modern template, using mostly black and white colors. However, it also uses a vibrant highlight color. As a result, the template looks more creative and interesting. In fact, each slide has its own color to make it more engaging. The first slide uses green, the second uses purple and the third uses orange.

3. Broken Grid Slider

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What makes this template creative is that it breaks the grid. A broken grid layout is a special kind of web page layout. It defines the standard grid layout by overlapping elements. As a result, some parts of the image could move under the text box.

4. SEO Agency

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Do you remember when we talked about illustrations in creative template design? Well, this example has plenty of them. There’s a custom illustrated figure on each slide to give the creative touch which helps you stand out. Additionally, it’s also interactive, because the circle reacts to the mouse movement. How cool is that?

5. Instagram Slider

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This template is a great example for a creative template for a couple of reasons. First, it breaks the grid by letting the text overflow the image. This is outstandingly creative and provides a memorable experience. Second, it uses cool animations. See how the main image moves in from bottom to top, and the shape comes in from top to bottom?

6. Car Rental

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It’s easy to recognize a creative template when it uses vibrant colors. Like this Car Rental example, which uses 5 gorgeous and energetic colors. Besides, the animations look neat, too.

7. Header Illustration

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Beautiful illustrations, cool effects, interactivity and emojis. This sounds like the secret recipe of building a fine creative template. But the Header Illustration template does not hold any secrets. In fact, it’s here to help you make your site more creative looking.

8. Advertising Agency

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If you look at the Advertising Agency template, it might look a bit empty. Even if it looks interesting, it feels empty, because the right side does not display anything. However, this seemingly empty block will pique the visitor’s interest. For that reason, they’ll start poking around and realize that it’s interactive. Images and videos appear on the empty right side, giving a creative touch to the template.

9. Flower Shop

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The Flower Shop is not the most colorful one from our creative template list. However, it has its place due to the awesome animations it has. It’s also interactive because it has a custom CTA button that switches slides.

10. 404 Illustration

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Creative template designers love illustrations. This block contains plenty of animated shapes to create an interesting layout. Additionally, some shapes react to the mouse movement, making it interactive.

Conclusion

It’s hard to create fresh designs when visitors expect similarity on websites. Similarly structured websites make it easy to find their way around. Luckily, using a creative template can help you stand out from the crowd of identical sites. Additionally, it can enrich the visitors’ experience and make your site memorable. Why not start designing a creative template today?

The post 10 Creative Template Ideas to Enrich Your Website appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

The Best WordPress Slider Templates

Bernadett Toth — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 06:00:48 +0000

Sliders are beloved design elements on different websites. They can cheer up your page and can call the visitors’ attention. Using a slider template speeds up your workflow. You may have questions like why is it worth using a template or how do you know which template is good for you? Which plugin has premium and free slider templates which you can fully customize? In this article I will answer these questions for you, and finally, I have summarized the best WordPress slider templates which you can use.

What is a slider template?

Slider templates are premade sliders which you can import, customize and, moreover, instantly use on your site. Slider templates have effects on it, contain images, the design is ready, and the slider is optimized for all devices. Moreover, they can help to start not from scratch but a ready to use layout.

Why is it worth using a slider template?

It speeds up your workflow: When you create your page, a ready to use slider template can be a lot of help. If you find the one which fits your design, all you need to do is change the content, and publish it on your website.
It teaches how to use the software: When you start using a new software, the beginning can be a challenge how to use the settings properly. You can learn a lot from a template: where to change layers, texts, images, animations, or where to change the style. You may not notice, but you’ve learned where these settings are, and how you can use them.
Ready to use effects: You don’t need to guess a completely new animation flow, in addition, you can save a lot of time with the ready animations.
Pre-designed: If you aren’t a designer, it can be hard to create a modern slider from scratch. A slider template is great for that, here you don’t need to think of the design, and you can customize everything.

5 points to recognize a good slider template

There are a lot of places where you can find slider templates. But how do you know which are reliable and work on every device? I’ve summarized 5 points, which you can take care of when looking for a good template.

1. Customizable

This is the most important part when you want to use a slider template: can you customize every part of it? A good slider template works the same way when you create a slider from zero, and lets you change anything you want: colors, sizes, images, texts, effects, etc.

Slide editor in Smart Slider

2. Not too complicated

Too complicated layouts can make your work harder, and I’m not sure if it’s worth it. If you can find out how the slider works, then your visitors can also find it out, and it can be a great starting point.

3. Well designed

A good template can make your website look as if you’ve hired a professional web designer. It looks good, uses modern effects, and stands its ground in the modern web design.

4. Responsive

Nowadays, this criterion is basic, every slider should be responsive and work well on different devices: mobile, tablet, laptop and PC. Each part should be readable on each device, the text and images shouldn’t be too small or big.

Smart Slider 3 is fully responsive

5. Quality assets

A great predesigned slider template should use quality assets like free to use images without any watermark with quality resolution.

What is Smart Slider?

If you have a WordPress website you may look for a slider plugin where you can find ready to use slider templates. Smart Slider is one of the best WordPress slider plugins which you can create slideshows, hero headers or homepage sliders with and it can be a great part of your page. It comes with tons of preset designs, and you can customize each slider template to your liking. You can add more texts, images, call to action buttons on your slider, you can change the colors, or add more layers. There isn’t really a limit on what you can do or what you can use a slider template for.

Smart Slider has free and pro versions. The free version is available in the WordPress repository, and has 800,000 active installs and 5-star ratings. The pro version gives options to a lot of features like parallax or particle effect, or layer animations, and you can import more slider templates from our library.

If you don’t want to waste your time by learning how to use a new software with many features, starting from a slider template can be useful. Luckily, Smart Slider offers a lot of ready to use slider templates, which you can easily use and personalize.

Template library of Smart Slider

When you create a slider in Smart Slider you can choose to create it from scratch or import a slider template. Smart Slider’s template library comes with 180+ customizable sliders, you can choose from blocks, sliders, carousels, video sliders or even pages.

10 different categories

Categories make it easier to find a matching template to your page. You want a video slider on the top of your page? Just click on the video label, and import the template you like.

Free: Free slider templates which can be imported in the free version of Smart Slider
Full width: Full width sliders fill the available width of the browser.
Full page: Full page sliders are 100% width and height, can be great homepage sliders.
Page: These are slider groups with which you can create your one page layout with only sliders.
Block: Blocks are single slides which can be used as great hero headers.
Carousel: With carousels you can display more slides at the same time, they can be great product carousels.
Showcase: Showcases are similar to carousels, you can display more slides, but you can show parts of the previous and next slides.
Boxed: Boxed sliders are as big as the containers where you publish them.
Video: Those sliders where you can find a video. A video can be in the background as a design element, or can be in the focus as a layer, like a YouTube slider.
Premium: All of the sliders which are available only in the Pro version.

How to import a slider template?

After you’ve installed Smart Slider you are able to import a slider template. For that, go to the Dashboard, and click on the green New Project button. Then select the Start with a template option, and import a template by clicking on the import button, which is visible when you hover over a slider.

🎓 Please note, if you want to import a Premium slider template then you need to activate your license first.

How to create a dynamic slider using the slider templates?

With Smart Slider, you are able to create dynamic sliders like a post slider or a product slider which automatically updates if you have a new post or product. You can create a dynamic slider and use our template if you follow these 7 steps.

Import a slider template from the Template library
After that, you will be in the Slider settings page. Select a slide that you want to use, and open it.
Copy the slide
Remove all slides from the template
Create a dynamic slide
Open that slide, and paste the copied slide
Click on the layers which you want to be dynamic and use variables

Publish your slider

There are more ways to publish your slider. You can use the Gutenberg editor and use the Smart Slider block, or you can use page builders like Elementor or Divi and use their widgets. You can also copy and paste the slider’s shortcode into a post or page, and if you are an advanced user, you can publish the slider using their PHP code.

The best slider templates

Are you looking for a great slider template for your website? Smart Slider has tons of templates which you can use, each pro and free slider templates. Now I have collected the 10 best slider templates which may inspire you and fit your page.

1. Full Page Portfolio

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Pro – Full Page Portfolio

The full page portfolio slider is a great example of a full page layout. Full page sliders fill the width and height of your browser. You can encounter this kind of layout in most WordPress themes. The slider has 4 slides, and you can switch slides with scrolling. After the latest slide, you can scroll below the slider. With this use case, you can make the visitors check out all content in the slider.

👍 Why it works: The contrast between the background and colorful elements makes the slider interesting for the visitor, and the green CTA with the highlighted heading attracts the eye, and the users will read the important information and navigate to another page.

2. Free Marketplace

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Free – Free Marketplace

This free slider template stands out from the others with its simplicity. This block can be a great hero header, and you can easily customize it. Just change the images and the texts, and your hero is done.

👍 Why it works: This slider block looks good with their colorful layout, and you can use it not only in your marketplace, but every other kind of website.

3. Cover Flow

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Pro – Cover Flow

The Cover Flow slider is a showcase which displays more slides at the same time. If you click on the previous or next slides, you can navigate in a cover flow. After the last slide the first will come which gives a great circle for the slideshow.

👍 Why it works: This WordPress slider template can be a great post slider that displays your latest posts. You can use the featured image of your post in the background, and the text can be the title of your posts.

4. Crypto Block

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Pro – Crypto Block

The crypto block slider template helps to create a modern header with modern animations and effects. The layers are coming in after each other thanks for the layer animation. But the slider doesn’t end there because the animated heading attracts the eye, and the changing word shows us interesting facts. Particles are moving in the background which completes the one color background.

👍 Why it works: If you import this template, all you need to do is change the texts, and put your links and the social images at the bottom. If you have a different background color than white, you can simply change the color of the shape divider at the bottom, and it will fit your page perfectly.

5. Bakery Page

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Pro – Bakery Page

Do you want to create a one-page website? Smart Slider also has a one-page slider template which consists of more slides under each other. You need to publish only the slider group, and the sliders will display in the adjusted order.

👍 Why it works: If you need to create a page fast then this page template is a great solution. Change the content, and customize every element of the page. The animation works well together, and the parallax effect gives a movement when you scroll.

6. Lawyer slider

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Pro – Lawyer slider

Do you have a lawyer company and find a stunning slider template on the top of your page? If you have the Pro version of Smart Slider, you can import the Lawyer slider with 3 clicks. Each slide has its own content, which is fully customizable, and the video is a great design element in the background.

👍 Why it works: The slides can be very informative with a great layout, you can display the team members or the results of your company. Switching slides is very easy. The bottom part of the slider is a navigation which you can move between the slides with, and read only the part that you are interested in.

7. Category Carousel

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Pro – Category Carousel

With the Category Carousel template you can navigate between your product categories. There are more slides next to each other, and you can put a link on the slides, with which you can navigate your visitor to the category page.

👍 Why it works: This slider template can be used manually or dynamically. You can create your categories once, and then select an image and link to the matching category. But you can create a dynamic slider, and create the slides in a dynamically changing way. It’s your choice which way you will use.

8. Free Traveler Block

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Free – Free Traveler Block

One of the best free slider templates is the free traveler block. This hero header is fully customizable and it is fully responsive, and looks good on every device. The top place is the place of your navigation, the middle is the place of your CTA, and the bottom part is for social media.

👍 Why it works: This free slider template has many opportunities. It can be a great header, calls the visitors’ attention and has many linking options.

9. Broken Grid Slider

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Pro – Broken Grid Slider

That slider template can be useful if you’re searching a place to display your latest post in an interactive and attractive way. Use it as a dynamically changing post slider, and place it on your blog.

👍 Why it works: Broken grid layouts are modern and breaks the monotony of your page. It’s a beloved slider template with a simple layout. A box is in the middle with a heading and you can navigate with the arrows to the next or previous slides.

10. Gym slider

🎓 Available in Smart Slider 3 Pro – Gym slider

Gym slider is a boxed slider template and can fit in every section of your page. The colorful tiles have a role, each navigates to a pre-selected slide. It can fit every fitness website, but if you personalize the images, the template offers endless possibilities.

👍 Why it works: The slider doesn’t fill up the whole width of your page but the width of the section where you put it. So it fits well, and the informative slides give information about your company or services.

Final Thoughts

Using pre-designed slider templates can save you a lot of time. If you don’t want to start designing from scratch and waste your time, it is enough if you import a template and personalize it. If you choose Smart Slider you can choose from tons of premade sliders in different categories, and you can customize every template as you imagined.

The post The Best WordPress Slider Templates appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

How to Design & Build Your Next Slider

Daniel David — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 07:30:47 +0000

Let’s assume you have just downloaded the free version of Smart Slider 3 and you are facing the challenge of creating your first or next slider. In the previous weeks I redesigned almost all of our template sliders so I have bulletproof design process to share with you. This article won’t be a tutorial but it will guide you how to design your new slider, block or page with Smart Slider 3.

Sliders help your visitors understand your company, product or brand through images, videos, texts, and interactions. But how can you achieve the best result and create a perfect slider? Simply follow the next 5 points and deliver more successful sliders faster and much more efficiently.

Slider design process in 5 simple steps:

💡 Planning
✂️ Preparation
🎓 Creating Your Slider
🎨 Designing & Building Your Slides
🏗️ Building Tips & Risks

💡 Planning

Planning is the most critical part of the slider design process. Take your time and identify the slider’s goal in this early, initial stage. If you don’t have the clear goal, you won’t be able to create a proper slider design.

Questions to answer during this step:

a, What is the main purpose of your slider? Informing, selling, or entertaining?
b, What do your visitors expect?
c, What type of slider do you need? Full width slider, carousel, or just a simple block?
d, What will be the content of your slides?
e, How many slides do you need?

Take your time and answer these questions before jump right into the slider settings. It’s really easy to skip the planning stage, but this is critical for creating a successful slider.

Through these answers, you will outline the first concept of the showcase that would fit the client’s specifications.

After you figure out what the project is exactly, you can start to come up with ideas and solutions. At this point, I strongly recommend to take inspiration from our Slider Library. Those examples are all great sources to learn what’s trending now or to get new ideas.

✂️ Preparation

Using the information gathered from stage one, it is time to put a plan together. Visualization can help you organize your thoughts and shape the design of your slider. Nowadays there are several design tools available on the market, but a simple pencil and paper can be surprisingly helpful.

Paper wireframing

First and foremost, your aim is to create a wireframe then if you need you can move into a realistic mockup using a designing software such as Photoshop or Sketch.

Slider mockups in Sketch

Main points of preparation

Images: Background images have a more significant role in slider design now than ever before. Use high quality pictures and don’t be afraid to try more. It’s very important to find those photos which resonate with your goal and communicate your message clearly.

The best size for a background image is usually the size of your slider.

But the maximum should be around 1920x1080px. The most common background image size that I use is 1920x600px, because it fits very well into a full width slider. On the other hand I like to set the maximum height to 600px because it’s ideal for any content, it’s not too tall and not too short. If you have the exact image, try to compress it as small as possible. For the transparent pictures use PNG8 format and for background images use JPG and try to set the quality as low as possible without radical quality loss.

Content: While the images and effects will steal the show in slider design, you still need a good content. The content includes headings, paragraphs, images, videos, icons, buttons, and multimedia. Fortunately in Smart Slider 3 the most popular content types are available as layers. Your content is the reason why people come to your website and one of the most important parts of the good content is the good copy, because your copy will make or break the success of your slider in terms of trust, engagement and SEO.

Style Guide

Style: Your challenge as a designer is balancing the visual content and information content. A good design should be both pleasing to the eye, and also communicate the key messages to your audience. The really great designers have strong intention behind every decision. Generally the most important aspect of the style is the consistency. Whatever font, color, and icon style you choose, make sure that you use the same decision through all of your slides.

🎓 Creating Your Slider

We’re now at the end of the planning and preparation phase where we can start the actual visual slider design because your slider should more or less get into shape. Let’s sum up quickly what we know or what we have presently:

Purpose of the slider
Slider type, slide count
Design assets (images, videos, icons and so on…)
Content (with good copy)
Style (outlines the design of the layers)

Here is the time to turn your vision into a live working slider or block for your WordPress or Joomla website. There are two popular ways to start: import a slider or create a new one.

Import a pre-build template Slider

As a newcomer the most comfortable way to create a slider is to import a ready to use slider from the template library. By one click you can instantly start to discover the slider settings, tweak the layers and play with the animations. When you have got familiar with the interface you will be able to replace the background images, paste your copy and change the style to your own in minutes. The whole process will usually take about 5 to 20 minutes with responsive settings and testing.

Available slider templates

Creating a brand new Slider

In this section, I’ll be covering the most important slider related questions, options and design decisions that you have to figure out. However I’ll focus on a normal slider because this is the most common usage. Here are the crucial points to setup the slider correctly:

Slider size: In short, it can be really different because of the nature of the different sliders, but with the 1200×600 px you can’t go wrong. Doesn’t really matter if it’s a boxed, a full width, or a full page slider, this size will be a great starting point.

Create a new slider

Slider settings: Smart Slider 3 is one of the most advanced slider plugins on the market so there is a ton of options. For example you should go to the General tab and find the perfect main animation for your slider. This is the only essential animation which will move your slides. On the Size tab you will find every height and width related settings, here I really like to use the maximum slider height. Mostly because on a bigger screen the slider can scale up really big without this setting. Last but not least you should consider to use the slider autoplay.

Controls: Scroll down a little bit and you will find the control settings like the arrows, bullets and thumbnails. This is a key moment to add a good navigation to your slider. The easiest step if you choose an arrow, later maybe you will build your own navigation with layers.

Create an experience: This is the area where Smart Slider 3 starts to really shine. It’s time to think about how you can use animations and effects to truly delight your visitor. Background animation, Ken Burns effect, animated shape divider, particle effect, every type of parallax effect? No problem, but keep in mind less can be more in the world of animations and effects.

In order to this, you will add few slides at first then go back to the Slider options and set the previously mentioned parameters like the autoplay.

🎨 Designing & Building Your Slides

This area is where all of your design assets, content ideas and style concept come into play. Once you’ve created a Slider, you will be able to add different type of Slides. Slides are those elements which have a background and can contain various types of layers. This slide creation part will be super easy for you because you made the background images and videos previously. In 2008 probably it would be the end of this article, because the slider is ready with your images. But in 2018 you’re able to build complex layouts with layers.

Because you’re reading this article, you probably have web designer or developer career behind your back. I’m sure you have seen (or made) images with fix text without a single line of HTML before. It’s the time to forget it! This is terrible for your website in different aspects like: SEO, responsive behaviour and readability.

Working with Layers

In the free version of Smart Slider 3 every essential layer is available. As a result of this, you can transmute the previously specified content and style into a layer in no time. Every heading, text, image, button and video can be edited easily with the customization options. You can change every detail that really matters in typography and style.

Layer Positions

Smart Slider 3 stands above all of the premium sliders because it comes with two positioning modes which is totally unique: Default and Absolute positioning.

Absolute positioning: It gives you the absolute freedom, because the layers which are in this mode can move anywhere and overlap each other on the slide. This behaviour can be familiar from Photoshop or from every other premium slider plugin. At first glance this mode looks really promising but when the mobile editing comes in the picture, the editing process can be time consuming and far from effective. By default, the canvas mode maintains relative spacing between layers of the slide. So if the slider scales down then the layers also have to scale down to keep every ratio.

Default positioning: To avoid the previously mentioned responsive problems we released the Default positioning in version 3.2. In this positioning you can put the layers below or above each other and with rows and columns you can position them next to each other. The whole approach is closer to HTML structure. With this mode your layers will determine the height of the slider automatically in mobile and every other view.

Default or Absolute positioning?

The proper answer is both. Sometimes you need the freedom or the overlapping behaviour of the Absolute layers but sometimes you need the advantage of the structured content of Default layers in the same slide.

But all in all, try to add every layer with Default positioned layers and use Absolute layers only for overlapping and decorating.

🏗️ Building Tips & Risks

Here are few of my favorite and most useful tips to edit the slides correctly:

Three Fonts Rule

Try to limit the number of font families to maximum 3 and stick to the same ones through the entire slider. Unnecessary fonts make your slider slow, unstructured and unprofessional.

Limit the Length of your Lines

Having the right amount of characters on each line is key to the readability of your slider. The optimal line length for your text is considered to be 60-80 characters per line. Therefore, use bravely the max-width option to limit the width of your layers.

The Power of White Space

Whitespace is the distance between different elements that gives visitors some visual breaks. If used correctly, it can provide many advantages to your slider. For example: better legibility, highlighting a particular element, better user experience and more interactions. In Smart Slider 3 you can easily insert whitespace with various techniques such as margins, paddings, gutters or aligns.

Keep Mobile in Mind

It’s common problem for beginners to design different quantity of content on the slides. For example the first slide contains only a few sentences, but the next one is full of images, paragraphs or buttons. At first, everything looks great on desktop but on mobile the height of the slides can be really variable which results in awkward experience for your visitors. I typically start with a desktop layout first, however I keep mobile in mind from the start.

Try to distribute the content equally among the slides. If one of your slides has too much content, don’t be afraid to hide the unnecessary parts, and just keep the important message on mobile. Smart Slider 3 is full of responsive options and tools which will help you design the perfect slider for mobile and tablet. You can optimize the slides for mobile easily with the following device specific options: hide layer, text size modifier, align, position, size, gutter, padding, margin.

Avoid too Many Slides

My recommendation is to use maximum 5 slides per slider in normal slider scenario. Of course, if you create a product carousel, this number can be so much higher because you can see 3-4 slides at the same time. I think the only exception if you would like to create a gallery slider where your aim is to show plenty of pictures. In that case don’t forget to turn on the lazy loading option and the image optimization, with these settings you can speed up the loading time drastically.

Never Stop Testing

Testing your slider is critical both in the building phase and after you’ve got what you’ve built. Don’t forget to preview your website periodically to make sure the slider works correctly.

Closing

Design is a fluid and ongoing process that requires constant maintenance. Probably you will add new content from time to time or keep the existing content up-to-date. By following the 5 steps above, your slider design process should go more smoothly. What does your slider design process look like? Do you have any suggestions how can we improve the process? Post your ideas in the comments below.

PS.: During the next weeks we would like to write a whole bunch of articles. The topics will cover in-depth guides about responsive settings, slider loading, SEO options and so on. If you are interested, stay tuned and subscribe to our newsletter.

The post How to Design & Build Your Next Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.