Parts of a Typical WordPress Website with Parallax
WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) which powers over 24 million websites globally. It is extremely flexible and offers a lot of functionality with little to no coding needed if you know what settings to use. A WordPress website can be fully customized to fit any need or purpose with just a few clicks of a button.
Nowadays, more and more people are realizing the benefits of a WordPress website and are looking for ways to improve their user experience (UX). One way is by utilizing the popular parallax scrolling technique which was originally used for the Apple website. By using this technique, the background of the website slowly and smoothly scrolls while the foreground content stays still. This can help provide a better UX as visitors will be able to more easily focus on absorbing the content rather than having to constantly keep scrolling to remain engaged.
Why Parallax Scrolling?
When scrolling through a news website or a blog, you’ll often notice that the farther back you go, the more the scrolling stops and images stay put. This is because the webpage’s design or the blog post’s content is paused for a moment while the scroll overlaps the image.
If the scrolling action continues uninterrupted, the content will start to move again at the same pace as the user. This is how parallax scrolling is supposed to work, but many visitors won’t have the attention span needed to keep scrolling indefinitely. They will quickly get bored and possibly leave the page or blog post entirely.
How to Use Parallax Scrolling Effectively
To ensure that your visitors stay engaged and keep scrolling, you should consider using a combination of techniques. It is not advisable to simply use one method for the entire duration of the webpage or blog post because, as stated above, visitors will become desensitized to the effect and may even start to avoid it. Having too many techniques will make your site or blog look like a mess, and it won’t provide the desired effect consistently either.
There are several different ways in which you can use the parallax scrolling technique to get the best possible results. You can either use a single background image which is scrolled at a consistent pace throughout the entire webpage or blog post. You can also use multiple background images which are each scrolled at their own pace to add more variety to the design. You can use this technique for every single section of the page or blog post, or you can use it for just the content in the middle.
If you decide to go with the single background image approach, make sure to set a maximum scroll distance. This ensures that the background image does not become too distracting and will not take visitors out of the flow of the content.
When Should I Use This Technique?
Depending on the webpage or blog post that you are creating, you may decide that parallax scrolling is not the best choice. Even if you decide to use the technique, you should try and use it in moderation because it can easily become overly complicated if used in every section of the webpage or blog post. For example, if you have a retail store’s webpage which showcases products at the top and then displays products based on their category or niche at the bottom, the bottom section might end up looking like a mess because of the continuous scrolling going back and forth.
How to Add a Parallax Scrolling Effect to My WordPress Website
If you’re trying to add a parallax scrolling effect to your WordPress website, there are several different ways that you can do this. The most straightforward method is to scroll through a series of background images which are sized appropriately for each section of the site. You can use an image carousel or a full-width background image with the background-attachment set to fixed. Make sure to play around with the settings until you get the feel for how the parallax scrolling would look on your site.