Blog Bog: Five reasons slideshow scourge must be stopped

Fellow bloggers I am mad as hell and I am not, as they say, going to take it anymore! The slideshow scourge must be stopped! I hereby present five reasons – in list form – all on the same god damn page! Yes, that’s right, you can ingest all five of the reasons why I have my fill of pathetic click fishing and only hit this post the once. EUREKA! It’s a goddamn internet miracle.

Slideshows are an insult to your readers.

So you want to share your five reasons why Lebron James is better than Michael Jordan? Swell. That kind of click bait is bound to draw in readers wanting to either nod in agreement or pound their fists in disagreement. Regardless of what motivated them to visit your site and read your post you should be thankful for the click and show them enough respect not to make them keep clicking. Everybody on the planet knows that bloggers aren’t restricted by column-inches and word counts – and that there’s infinite vertical space to fill with an article. There’s only one reason for you to break your article up into slides and it’s transparent as hell and THAT leads us to our next reason why your slideshows are hogwash…

You’re lying to your advertisers.

Hey! Look at all our page views! Aren’t we awesome?? No, you’re not awesome. You’re full of crap. Not only have you inconvenienced people with your dopey “click the arrow to see the next item” foolishness, you’re misleading sponsors with falsely inflated impressions. No, a reader didn’t ingest seven individual items on your blog; he or she read ONE item. It just took them seven clicks to get there. Luckily, buyers of web media have gotten more wise to this tactic and THAT leads us to the next reason you should stop dicking people around with slideshows …

Unique visitors are far more important than page views these days.

Advertisers aren’t as interested in how many page views you generate as they are the number of people who are exposed to their message on a daily basis. Smarter buyers have caught on to the slideshow deception and they’re looking for more in terms of real value. Aggravating your readers doesn’t make them more likely to shop your sponsors. Bringing more readers to your site, however, does. But, by using the slideshow method you’re limiting new readership because people are just plain “over it” – which brings us to yet another reason you should nix slideshows …

It’s not 2009 anymore.

Yeah, Bleacher Report made millions pioneering the slideshow scourge. But that was half a decade ago. Now BR relies a lot more on good writers and lots of ‘em. The internet is always evolving and as such so are internet users. Dial-up modems are dead along with BBSs and AOL. Things are constantly changing so for you to still be clinging to a method that users can see right through these days just makes your site appear dated. Speaking of being behind the times …

Slideshows really suck on mobile devices.

Your dipshit slideshows are a big enough pain in the ass when viewed on a desktop machine or a laptop but trying to view them on a phone is just awful. Pages load more slowly, the text slides around the screen as images and advertisements load. Phones are made for scrolling, not for clicking and by continuing to use slideshows you’re validating the fact that your site hasn’t kept up with technology.