What is the parallax effect and how is it used in WordPress?

Your website can contain a lot of valuable and insightful information. But all this means very little if your visual presentation doesn't stand out from the crowd. It only takes milliseconds for a reader to form a first impression of your site. That's not nearly enough time to read all your content, but it's plenty of time to click the back button.

Fortunately, WordPress offers plenty of options to maximize your site's appeal (and potential "purchase"). One of these methods is the WordPress parallax effect. What is the parallax effect? It's a feature that causes the background elements of a page to scroll slower than the elements in the foreground. It immediately adds a sense of richness, depth, and professionalism to your site and makes it more comfortable to scroll on all devices.

In this article, we answer the question: "What is the parallax effect and how can it benefit my site?" We will also discuss how you can add this feature to WordPress using a parallax WordPress theme or plugin. Let's get started!

What is the parallax effect (and how can it benefit your site)?

What is the parallax effect? A parallax is an effect that makes the orientation or position of a particular object look different when viewed from different angles. For example, when you are driving on a motorway, it can look like signs closer to the car are passing by. On the other hand, hills in the distance may appear to be drifting slowly.

Similarly, WordPress's parallax effect makes background and foreground elements scroll at different speeds. This effect, when used correctly, can give your pages a sense of depth. It's often best to use it on a landing page to make important information and sections stand out. It's also effective on portfolio pages, as it allows you to show off your past projects in a professional way.

No matter where you use it, the WordPress parallax effect can benefit your site in many ways:

You can use it to increase engagement and better manage the "flow" of a visitor's attention (so you can prioritize CTAs or other important information).

Parallax allows you to display more content on a single page.

Because the parallax effect helps you create a leaner, more interactive page, it can help reduce bounce rates on your site.

A site that uses the parallax effect is often more memorable than one that doesn't.

Of course, it should be noted that there are a few potential drawbacks to using the WordPress parallax effect. For example, implementing an image-rich parallax effect can slow down your site if you're not careful. But by choosing a quality hosting provider, this problem can be remedied. With 000webhost, for example, you can significantly increase the speed of your WordPress site by implementing HTTP/2, NGINX, and custom WordPress caching. This way you don't have to worry about the parallax effect.

Now that we've answered the question "What is the parallax effect?", let's discuss some of the ways you can implement this effect on your site. We'll start by talking about how to choose a parallax WordPress theme.

2 Amazing WordPress parallax themes

A WordPress theme determines how content is displayed on your site. If you want, you can easily find a specific parallax WordPress theme. What is a parallax WordPress theme? Most allow you to configure, customize and use this feature without coding. So the advantage of using a parallax theme is that it saves you a lot of time and effort. All you have to do is install the theme and configure it.

We've handpicked three WordPress parallax themes that we think are the best options. They're all visually appealing, responsive, and flexible enough to accommodate virtually any type of website. Before installing a parallax WordPress theme, however, it's a good idea to back up your WordPress site first (just in case). Once you've done that, you're ready to get started!

1| Allegiant

Allegiant is an elegant, polished and versatile parallax WordPress theme that is ideal for online stores or small business websites. It allows you to add parallax effects to header modules or create a custom sliding module with multiple images. This is great for product or portfolio presentations. The parallax effect options also make Allegiant ideal for creating one-page sites (which is useful if you want to ride the wave of a growing design trend).

In addition to helping you increase the visual appeal of your products and services with the parallax effect, Allegiant can take a lot of the worry and guesswork out of managing an eCommerce site. For example, this theme offers complete integration with WooCommerce. This means that you can encourage visitors to buy by showcasing your items using the parallax effect, and then allowing them to purchase those items quickly and easily.

Key features:

• Offers easily configurable parallax modules with the option to use single or multiple images.

• Includes image slider modules that are ideal for showcasing products, services, or other distinctive aspects of your business.

• Offers integration with WooCommerce, allowing you to easily sell the products you promote on your site.

• Pricing: the Allegiant lite version is completely free. However, if you want to take advantage of specialized support and use the Parallax WordPress theme on multiple sites, several Pro plans are available. These start at $59 per year.

2| AccessPress Parallax

This feature-packed, well-supported parallax WordPress theme has received over a hundred five-star reviews, and for good reason. AccessPress Parallax allows you to add smooth, multi-layered parallax headers and subsections to any page with just a few clicks. Like Allegiant, this theme is suitable for business pages where products and services, employee profiles, and testimonials need to be highlighted on the homepage. The professional version of the template allows you to add the parallax effect to virtually any area of the page you wish and doesn't limit you to just headers or set modules.

Other benefits of the AccessPress Parallax theme include its advanced post settings, which allow you to show or hide certain elements to improve your site's search engine optimization (SEO). You also have the option to integrate a Google map into your site. You can then highlight this element by placing it on a parallax background.

Key features:

• Includes several background design patterns and layouts to choose from.

• Allows you to upload your logo, as well as customize site layouts, color schemes, headers, and fonts.

• Provides ready-made modules with calls to action (CTAs).

• Offers reliable and dedicated support (which is highly praised in customer reviews).

• Pricing: In addition to the free version of this WordPress parallax theme, there is a Pro plan for AccessPress Parallax that offers a score of advanced features. These include the ability to create a parallax view for featured posts.

3 Practical Parallax WordPress Plugins

At this point, we have answered the question "What is parallax?" and discussed useful themes to help you add this effect to your website. However, you may be wondering if you can add a parallax effect to your WordPress site without changing the theme. Maybe you like your current theme and don't want to change it.

Fortunately, several WordPress parallax plugins offer a quick and easy way to add the parallax effect. What is a parallax plugin? These tools allow you to select the images you want, set their size on the page, and adjust the conditions that create the effect. In short, they can offer much more flexibility than a parallax WordPress theme.

To help you get started, we've selected three excellent parallax plugins for WordPress to get you started. All have high user ratings and reliable support and are easy to use. Regardless of the type of website you have, you can add a parallax effect relatively easily with these plugins.

1| Parallax Image Plugin.

This lightweight but very flexible plug-in allows you to implement a parallax effect using shortcodes. Although this may seem a little daunting at first for those new to the process, Parallax Image provides documentation and support to simplify the process. In short, all you need to do is enter the shortcode text you want for the parallax image effect on your page and adjust the parameters accordingly.

The parameters for the parallax effect include the image itself (.jpeg or.png file preceded by the image name), the height of the image, and the speed of the effect. All of these parameters are easy to set so you can make your parallax effect look just right. You can also adjust the position of the parallax image. You can also make the images compatible with mobile devices.

Key features:

• You can enable the parallax effect on virtually any page you want it to appear on.

• Gives you lots of editing freedom to control image size, position, scrolling speed, and z-indexing.

• You can adjust the size of the image background for the parallax effect. This prevents it from harming your website load times.

• Provides a support forum for quick troubleshooting.

• Pricing- free

2| Master Slider - Responsive touch slider.

Free access to the master slider add-on.

Master Slider - Responsive Touch Slider, while not exclusively designed for adding parallax effects to WordPress, can certainly get the job done. This extension comes with several default templates for image and video sliders that can be customized and added to any page or post on your site. The Pro version of Master Slider includes nine starter templates that include a parallax effect. One example is the Parallax Photography Slider, which has predefined settings for displaying flowing images against a static or slow-moving background.

Master Slider also offers many options to customize the effect to your website's needs. For example, you can specify whether the parallax should be triggered by mouse movements, page swipes, or standard scrolling effects. You can also set the depth percentage of the layer (which makes the effect appear deeper or less deep). Finally, a handy test and preview function is included to get your unique parallax effect just right.

Key Features:

• Provides robust and intuitive settings that allow you to tweak your website's parallax effect until it's perfect.

• Includes several pre-built parallax effect templates for you to choose from.

• You can save your settings for the parallax effect slider.

• You can easily adjust the speed of the parallax effect.

• Price: The free version of Master Slider is quite limited and does not include parallax templates. The Pro version is available with a $24 standard license and includes everything you need to create a custom parallax effect.

3| Slider from WD

Slider by WD WordPress Parallax Plugin.

Slider by WD allows you to easily add dynamic parallax mouse moving effects to your website. With a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, you don't need to implement any code to make your parallax effect look right. However, if you want to experiment further, you can further customize the effect with your CSS.

Although Slider by WD allows you to turn on the parallax effect with a single setting, the way the effect works (i.e. how objects within the effect move in response to mouse movement) depends on the z-indexing of the elements. This gives you considerable freedom in terms of the sense of depth and movement that the effect provides.

Key Features:

• Allows you to create interactive parallax scrollbars with layers that follow the trajectory of mouse movement.

• Allows you to control the direction and speed of the planes included in the parallax effect.

• Provides standard parallax sliders that you can easily adjust.

• Offers dedicated and reliable support to help you achieve the right effect.

• Price: the free version of this plugin does not include the parallax feature. However, if you invest in the Pro version (from $30), you can implement these features and several other sliders and transition effects.

| Conclusion

A well-designed website should balance great aesthetics with carefully organized information. As we've seen, the WordPress parallel effect is a simple but effective way to achieve both goals. What's more, you can add this effect to your website using a parallax theme or WordPress plugin.

If you are looking for a WordPress developer there are many web development companies in India that help in building well-designed software for your next project.

I'm Olivia Cuthbert and I am a Sr. technical consultant and writer working for PixelCrayons. I am passionate about exploring and writing about innovation & technology and have been in this field for 4+ years.