Scrolling marquess are part of most sites I am called in to redesign. I don't buy their utility though. Let me explain by sharing a note I just sent on scrolling marquees to the designer working with me on of one of these sites - a professional development and training site. We are conducting an internal review of her initial design treatments:
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"THE MARQUEE
And let's go out the door WITHOUT a scrolling marquee. Scrolling/animated marquees deliver messages unevenly. Since few users stop to watch the whole roll, the frame they see is that frame they randomly see amidst looking at everything else on the homepage. So the messaging it delivers is random. It could be the message associated with slide #1 or #3 or....
"I'd like that marquee space to be static with the point of being a place for a single targeted call-to-action/informational messages that are singularly important. Eric [client] would also like the option of replacing the image with a video. I think marquees work well for site owners who are looking over their homepages with no specific goal in mind other than to see if the homepage is interesting. But for users who are trying to get something done on a website, they have much less value."
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Do I have any research to support my claim? No and I haven't found any yet. I am saying this without any user research to back me up, but there is no research I have found so far to support the other argument. So at this time, I am going to run with my supposition based on casual observations that not using scrolling marquees is better for users of my professional development site.
I stress "professional development site". There may be more of a case for using scrolling marquees on sites where people go to see what is up, such as news sites than sites where people go to get specific information or marcom sites that wish to deliver specific information.
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