The more elegant a website looks, the better the audience’s interaction with the content will be, right? On average, we have just 3 seconds to capture visitors’ attention in today’s instant-gratification world.
When a person lands on your website, it’s vital to divert their attention to something engaging, so they explore it further. One way of doing this is to add a slider on your homepage containing the list of services you provide or products you offer.
We’ll go through a step-by-step process to add a slider to your WordPress website.
How to Create a Slider on WordPress
There are different ways to make a slider, including using custom code, a plugin, or theme builders like Elementor. In this article, we’ll take the help of Smart Slider 3 and Elementor to design a slider for a WordPress website.
Smart Slider 3 incorporates all the fancy effects you can think of to amaze visitors. It supports the addition of text, headings, call-to-action buttons, and videos. You can choose from available designs and customize them to match your site’s style and branding.
You can add bullets, arrows, or thumbnails to make it more intuitive for visitors so they can effortlessly navigate through the information. However, it should reasonably match the website’s color scheme.
Download: Smart Slider 3
Let’s explore how you can use Smart Slider 3 to design a slider seamlessly for your website.
First, install the plugin from the WordPress plugins directory.
1. Go to Dashboard > Plugins > Add New.
2. Search for Smart Slider 3.
3. Install and activate the plugin.
How to Create a Slider With Smart Slider 3
Here’s how you can create the slider.
1. Click on the Smart Slider option in the dashboard menu.
2. Click on Go to Dashboard.
3. Click on New Project.
4. Either choose a template or create a new project. (Choosing a template will make it easier to design the slider).
5. Among the free templates available, choose one that fits your needs.
6. Pick a template and click Import.
Once the template has been imported, it’s time to customize it.
How to Edit and Customize the Slider
Here’s how you can customize the slider.
1. Go to Dashboard > Smart Slider.
2. Click on the Edit Slider from the drop-down menu as shown above. Choose the desired template and click Edit.
3. In the edit section, a pop-up window will appear where you can edit and customize the image, background, and text according to your choice.
4. After making the changes, click Save and preview the slider once.
The slider is ready to go.
How to Add the Slider to Your Website
To add the slider to your website,
1. Go to Main Menu > Visit Site.
2. Go to the page where you want to display the slider.
3. Click Edit with Elementor.
Let’s add the slider to the website using the Elementor page builder.
Add or Edit the Slider With Elementor
To add and edit the slider,
1. Go to the Elementor dashboard and search for “Smart slider”.
2. Drag and drop the widget to the place where you want to display the slider.
3. Once you drop the widget to the new section, a pop-up window will appear. Insert the template you imported previously.
The slider you created has been added to the home page.
Add a Slider to Increase Engagement Rate on Your Website
The first few milliseconds are crucial to create an excellent first impression. This is where the slider comes in. By enhancing the beauty of your website, sliders engage the users and divert the user’s attention to important information. Creating sliders might be a little time-consuming, but the results are worth the effort.
Adding sliders may help increase the engagement rate at your website, however, it may also slow it down. Regularly test your website with speed test tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix speed test, Pingdom speed test, and a few others. If you find your website lagging while loading resources for the slider, remove it from your website.
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