The hero section of your homepage or landing page is your first impression, a critical opportunity to showcase promotions, highlight featured products, and convey key messages. Yet for many eCommerce stores, this space underperforms.
Instead of engaging visitors, the familiar image slider often turns into background noise. Slider blindness sets in: users quickly tune out rotating banners, and few ever see beyond the first slide. What should be a high-impact moment becomes forgettable.
Our challenge was to reclaim that attention. We wanted every visitor to feel in control; able to explore, discover, and be genuinely engaged.
How did we make it happen?
The Six Pillars of Dynamic Slider Engagement
Our dynamic slider focuses on interactivity and measurable results. To deliver on this promise, the development was guided by six foundational principles (acceptance criteria). Let’s explore what they are:
We’ve developed two variations of the slider to fit different storefront needs:
- Full-Width Slider: Extends across the entire width of the page, typically used to maximize visual impact.
- Multi-Panel Slider: Displays multiple product panels or cards simultaneously within the slider container, offering a denser view and faster scanning of diverse products.
Real-World Impact: Štark and Hajduk Split
The true test of any feature is its performance in a live environment. These slider variations have been successfully implemented and tested on two diverse Magento stores: the popular retail site for Štark and the high-traffic fan shop for Hajduk Split.
Štark Webshop: Full-Width Immersion
For the Štark webshop, we implemented a full-width version of our dynamic slider. Štark’s products and campaigns rely heavily on imagery and emotion, and the wider format provides the space needed to showcase this storytelling effectively.
The full-width design emphasizes key promotions and seasonal highlights while maintaining a clean, uninterrupted flow across the homepage. This approach transforms the hero section into a visually immersive experience.
Hajduk Split Webshop: Multi-Panel Dynamic
The Hajduk Split webshop came with a different set of priorities. Fans visit the store for many different reasons, whether it’s to grab the latest match kit or find souvenirs, so it was important to guide them quickly to what matters most.
To meet this need, we implemented the multi-panel version of our dynamic slider. By showing several panels at once, the layout immediately communicates that more content is available on both sides.
This setup encourages active browsing, keeps users engaged, and reflects the energetic nature of the Hajduk fan community.
Data Speaks
For the Hajduk Split webshop, we used GA4 event tracking to draw a precise performance comparison between the old and the new dynamic slider.
Let’s examine the collected data, comparing the old event names (banner_viewed) with the new, dedicated slider events (prefixed with hp_hero_slide), to see how interactive design principles translate into measurable results:
First off, the new slider logged 126,199 display events compared to 89,450 for the old one. Looking deeper, the Events per Active User (ECPU) metric showed a significant increase of 42.8% (rising from 4.70 to 6.71). Since the overall user base remained stable, this increase in both display event count and per-user engagement confirms that the new slider is more effective at driving user interaction and consumption of its content.
We achieved exactly what we set out to do: more people are exposed to the messages on the slider, making that prime hero space much more effective!
This is still an early implementation phase, but the initial shift in user behavior validates our approach, and we are looking forward to generating our first comprehensive hero slider usage reports to continually optimize performance.
Dynamic Slider in Hootify
Dynamic sliders are also a core component of Hootify, our eCommerce platform built on Magento Open Source.
On Hootify, you can see both the full-width and the multi-panel slider versions in action.
For those interested, we offer a free admin access upon request, allowing you to directly see how easily the sliders can be configured from the admin perspective.
Time to Upgrade Your Hero
The hero section is where first impressions are made; don’t let its power fade away with a static, unengaging display. Our dynamic Magento slider creates an interactive experience that captivates visitors immediately upon landing on your storefront.
If your current slider is costing you performance and clicks, it’s time to go dynamic. Choose engagement, choose performance, and start gathering the analytics you need to optimize your most valuable online real estate.
If you need help, we’re here to assist! Contact us today.
