Posted on December 1st, 2016 by David Taplin
We have all heard the saying ‘a picture paints a thousand words’, but can the use of good imagery help you with your website?
Well, the short answer is yes.
We are living in an age of pictures, photos and imagery, we now also have constant access to phones and mobile devices with built in cameras, making us all capable of taking, recording, editing and uploading quality photos on the move. There are also some great apps and social media tools out there that make it very easy to share your photos globally in an instant.
People are naturally drawn to good quality images, even more so than content. A website that uses eye catching, thought provoking and vibrant imagery will draw the visitor or potential customer in before they have even read any content, decided whether to take action or have even understood what your product is!
Here is a high level breakdown of some of the benefits of ensuring your website contains quality imagery:
1) Immediate Hook
Quality Imagery can act as an immediate hook for people that land on your site. The imagery should act as means to entice the visitor in to look around with a view to taking an action of your choosing, e.g. buying, registering, signing-up, downloading etc. No matter what the site is selling or promoting, there is absolutely no reason why the images should not be:
- Good quality
- Convey a message (even without text)
- Vibrant or eye catching
- Correct size, not stretched to fit
- An image with some thought, not just a ‘filler image’
- Have the appropriate alt text.
2) Evoke Engagement
If you land on a webpage that is saturated with content, unless you are there to utilise, download or read that specific content you will quite quickly be turned off will leave without engaging at all.
You should never underestimate the effectiveness of using eye catching imagery to evoke emotion and ultimately engagement from users to the website. By using good imagery, you will not only be able to attract the users attention for long enough to convey a message, but also guide them or evoke an action.
3) Emotional Attachment
By using thought provoking imagery or images that makes the user sit up and take notice you can begin to evoke an ‘emotional state’ or attachment with their experience and journey within your website.
4) Navigate or Take Action
By evoking this ‘emotional state’ within the visitor via the medium of great imagery you can very effectively lead the user to a location very quickly or get them to take an action within your website, for example download / sign-up / purchase or browse.
5) Because technology allows us to..
If we go back as little as a few years ago, connectivity and internet speeds were not great, this caused massive issues when it came to using good quality imagery. But since far better connectivity speeds have become available, those issues have somewhat been eliminated.
It is still good practice to ‘optimise’ your imagery in terms of size, positioning and quality however the possibilities have really been opened up with regards to the ability to use images a little more freely without the risk of the entire website grinding to a halt.
There are so many more great reasons why good quality imagery should be a pivotal part of any website design, so if you find yourself at the point of having to either re-design your existing website or design a website from scratch always remember to take some time to identify what sort of imagery would work best for you but always ensure it has ‘impact’.
We would love to hear from you and your experiences when it comes to your own website and what you have found works well, so please get in touch with us.
