If a moose were standing in your living room, would you be able to spot it? Probably.

If I asked you to find information on a website that was right at the top of the home page in 98-point font and featured a big picture of a moose on it, do you think you could spot it? Probably not. At least that's the finding of website usability specialist, Jakob Neilsen.

He was looking at what seems to have become all the rage on websites these days: the carousel. (That's a large banner at the top of a website home page that automatically changes every few seconds to reveal a new sales pitch.)

It started with the idea that, if we put a large banner with our main sales pitch at the top of the page, people will see it and, hopefully, act on it. If that works--and it does--it only stands to reason that, if we change the sales pitch every few seconds, then more people will buy more stuff more often, right?

Well, not really.

It's not that banners that don't work. The problem is that, if they change automatically every few seconds, the content isn't static long enough for anyone to read it. If that seems obvious, sadly, it's not obvious to the millions of website developers who have jumped on the carousel bandwagon (to use a mixed metaphor that creates a truly bizarre image).

So, should we abandon the idea of a carousel? No. But I would suggest a new approach. Your first banner image should continue to feature your main message, of course. That way, if site visitors see only one image, they will get the most important information.

But give up control! Instead of having the image change every few seconds, make it obvious the banner can change, but let the viewer change it.

Either that or mount a good set of antlers on it.