The carousel survives because it ends arguments. Marketing wants the sale, the founder wants the story, the buyer wants the new range, and a carousel lets all three win. Except that nobody waits for slide two, so only the first one wins, and it wins with a smaller button and an arrow in the way.
The numbers are not close
Watch anyone use a phone. They scroll before the second slide arrives. Whatever is on it might as well not exist, and the message you fought for in the meeting is being shown to people who have already left.
A carousel is an unmade decision about what matters most.
Make the decision
Pick the one thing a new visitor should do. Give it the full width, the largest type on the page and one button. If that seems unfair to everything else, good. That is the feeling of prioritising.
If four things matter, give them four sections
A carousel stacks four messages in the same space and shows one. Sections stack them down the page and show all four, in order of importance, to anyone who scrolls. Stacking is not less design. It is the design.
The exceptions are narrower than you think
A gallery of one product's photographs is a carousel, and a useful one: the customer chose to look. A row of testimonials can scroll, because nobody needs to read all of them. What does not belong in a carousel is anything you need every visitor to see.
What to do on Monday
Open your homepage. Screenshot slide one. That is your homepage now. Move slides two to four into sections below it, and delete the ones you cannot justify as a section. Most stores keep two.
One image, one message, one button.
