When you want to bring some life to your Magento web store, a well-designed carousel or slider may be a good choice. A slider can be a very attractive feature if you manage to gather a great collection of high-quality images to display. Also, your page can look new with every visit by cycling images naturally, so it can give visitors the feeling that your website is dynamic and always has new content.

A carousel is also a great way to fit a lot of content in a short page area because all the information goes in the same place. You just have to use it wisely and don’t hide any important information.

Perhaps you’ve thought about these benefits before, but are still wondering about how to incorporate some sliders into your web store. So without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the best and easy to use carousel extensions you can add to your web store.

Slider by Slava Yurthev

We begin this list with the simple yet beautiful Slider developed by Slava Yurthev. It is compatible with versions 2.1 and 2.2 of Community Magento, and best of all, it’s free.

After installation, the extension automatically sets up a slider on your homepage, but you can change it to another page on your store in the settings. There are also multiple styles to choose from, and the extension is very lightweight

This carousel is based on the bxSlider jQuery library and uses fully open source code. It allows clicking to go back and forward, and also supports swiping from any mobile device. A wiki is available on GitHub, and you also get timely support from the developer.

Image Slider by Aheadworks

This carousel developed by Select Technology Partner Aheadworks is a paid extension, but may be worth the investment. It allows you to add an unlimited number of sliders to any part of your web store you desire.

It is easy to install and fast to load, and the support provided by the developer is also helpful. Some great features include customization of slider height and width, automatic resize of sliders for mobile-responsive pages and even adding videos to the carousel.

When you want to bring some life to your Magento web store, a well-designed carousel or slider may be a good choice.

Banner Slider by Magestore

The Banner Slider by Magestore is free, not only for Community Edition 2.0, 2.1 but also for Enterprise Edition.

You can set up sliders in up to 36 different positions in your web pages. This is done in a backend settings page, where you can configure the settings for all your sliders and preview the end result. There is also an array of cool effects you can add to make the sliders more visually appealing.

After all of this is done, this module also provides reports on click statistics so you can evaluate the effectiveness of your carousels.

Easy Sliders by Templates Master

This carousel comes as a paid extension for most versions of Magento 1, Community Edition, but the support you get from the developer makes up for it. One downside is that you first have to install the Templates Master Core module, although this one is free. The Core module is meant to provide some libraries that make other extensions by Templates Master work properly.

These sliders are based on Nivo sliders, which are some of the most popular carousels available for web platforms, and are also used in WordPress, for example. The Easy Sliders are mobile-responsive, fully compatible with touch and swipe features, and include 21 different Nivo-style effects and 5 different animation types.

Featured Products Slider by Orange35

The Featured Products Slider is an easy to use, lightweight and highly customizable solution to add some life to your web store. It supports an unlimited number of sliders in all of the store’s pages.

The module is easy to install and start using right away, with 3 different templates you can choose from. There is the standard horizontal carousel, but also an unconventional vertical carousel to add some originality. The third option is a horizontal carousel with a big slider above it. The idea is to navigate through the carousel as you normally would, and at the same time show some detailed descriptions in the big slider, as well as some action buttons like Add to Cart, Add to Wishlist and Add to Compare.

It is fully open source, and it is a paid extension compatible with Magento 1 COmmunity Edition.

Also Viewed Products by Vova Yatsyuk

This free carousel by developer Vova Yatsyuk brings something different to the table. This extension is focused on showing the visitor previously viewed products, or others related to them. If you own a web store, you know this might be a valuable part of your business.

The great thing about the Also Viewed Products is that it is so easy to set up. Just install it and it configures the relations and suggestions automatically. Still, you have the option to control this and other settings in the configuration pages available in the application’s backend.

Product Sliders by Big Drop

Product Sliders comes as a free extension for Magento 1 Community Edition. This module focuses on quickly adding products to a carousel based on product attributes, saving you the trouble of adding each product manually. What’s great about it is how easily you can set up some product carousels with little to no customization.

Some examples are to set up global sliders for bestseller products, products on sale, featured, newest and recently viewed. There are also some other carousels you can configure such as “Similar Products”, which is related to current product category, or “Associated Products”, which is based on some parameters that you can configure in the backend page.

OWL Carousel and Slider by WeltPixel

This feature-packed module by WeltPixel is free for Magento Community Edition, yet paid for the Enterprise Edition. It is based on the owl.carousel.js javascript library and allows you to place sliders in any section of your web store. You also get support from WeltPixel through their ticketing system.

Like the Image Slider by Aheadworks, it allows you to add videos to your carousels, but it also supports images, links, product descriptions, buttons and other types of custom content. Other nice features include creating carousels based on product types, touch and swipe support, stopping a slider on mouse-over, and more.