Your website can be the hardest working salesman on your team — working around the clock and never taking a sick day. If you’ve noticed that you are getting traffic to your website but that traffic isn’t converting to leads and sales, it’s time to figure out why that is happening.
One of the things that can affect the success of your website is the images you are using. The human brain processes images about 60,000 times faster than text, and 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual.
Those statistics prove the importance of the visual content on your site. Take a look at what people are sharing on social media. You will probably find that most people share posts containing a video, drawing, or photo.
While text-based content will always play an essential role in your marketing efforts, it’s important to realize that visual content plays a vital role in meeting the goals you have for your website and your business.
If you’re ready to learn more, keep reading. We will show you what you can do to ensure that you are using powerful images on your website.
3 Questions to Think About When Choosing Website Images
To ensure that the images you are using will connect with your customers, ask yourself these questions.
1. Does the Image Add Value?
The deciding factor on if a website image is effective or ignored is whether or not the image conveys helpful information. Using images just to “jazz up” your website will not positively affect converting visitors to clients.
Don’t just use an image, just to use an image. Make sure that it communicates something that your prospective customers will find helpful.
2. Will the Image Make an Emotional Impact?
Emotional contagion is when an individual’s emotions spontaneously spread to others, for example, smiling back at a friend when they smile at you. Images invoke those same emotions. If you use an image of a smiling, happy customer, your website visitor will also smile.
3. Does the Image Show How Your Product/Service Benefits the Customer?
The most important aspect when using images on your website is how the images show how your client will succeed by buying your product or service. Make sure the image shows their overall success and how you can help them overcome their internal questions.
8 Tips for Using Images on Your Website
Now that you know how to choose images that will have the most impact on your website, it’s time to talk about how you should use those images. Your website visitors need to understand your content quickly and easily to decide if it will be valuable to them.
Here are some things to keep in mind when using images on your website.
1. Choose Images About Your Customers, Not Your Company
All too often, small businesses create websites that show who they are as an organization. For example, they use images of their building, their employees, or themselves with their families, thinking these images will persuade visitors to work with them. But, you have to remember, your website should be about your customers, not your company.
Using images showing your potential clients what life would look like if they were to purchase your products or services will encourage them to want to discover more about your brand. Choose images that show what you can do for them that would make their life easier.
2. Make Sure Images Are Clear
If you visited a website and all of their images were blurry, what would you think about the company’s quality of service? Would you tend to believe that they provide poor quality service as well? It’s essential to make sure that you are using high-quality photos. Using bad images can be as bad as not using any images at all.
3. Always Use Legal Images
The main thing you want to remember is that you should always use legal images. You can’t just pick an image from the internet and put it on your website. Some companies charge you to use their images. Even if an image is free, you may still be required to say where you got it from and who created it.
Here are some of the different types of legal images and their definitions.
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Royalty-Free — While you don’t have to pay for royalty-free images, you can use them however you want, but you can’t edit or resell the image.
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Rights Managed — You purchase a single-user license for the image you choose. However, you have to decide where you will use it (for example, on your website). If you choose to use the same image in a different place (in a blog post), you must purchase another license.
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Public Domain — There are no restrictions for public domain images. You do not have to get permission before using these images.
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Creative Commons — You have access to these images that the creator has granted, and typically you will need to give credit to the creator.
If you are willing to invest in your images, there are websites where you can purchase images. There are also websites where you can get good quality, free images available for download.
4. Use Images That Are on Brand
What is the main thing you want your business to be known for? Being classy? Family-oriented? Fun? Make sure that the images you are using portray the identity of your company.
You also want to make sure that your images portray your target market. For example, if your company markets its product to millennials, you don’t want to use images of senior citizens or children.
5. Let Your Image Double as a Call-To-Action
Using your image as a call-to-action (CTA) is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. Doing this can tell visitors precisely what action you want them to take and makes it more likely that you will be able to convert visitors into prospective clients.
6. Optimize Your Image For SEO
Images are important in terms of SEO (search engine optimization) for your website. It’s important to make sure that your images give search engines the required contextual information they need. Below are ways that you can optimize your image for SEO.
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Optimize File Names of Your Images — When naming your file, make sure to use descriptive, relevant keywords. If you have an image of a family on a bike ride, instead of naming the image “Family1.jpg”, give it a more descriptive title such as “Family-on-a-bike-ride.jpg.” As you can see, we have used hyphens in the title, not underscores. When you use underscores, search engines do not recognize them, and they can’t identify each individual word.
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Use Alt Tags — Using alternative text will allow search engines to index your image content accurately. You should use words that are relevant to your brand to boost your visibility. Aim for 10-15 words that will convey something about your image.
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Optimize Your Image Title — If the image title is not the filename, rename it with keywords as you did with the filename.
7. Choose the Right Compression Rate
If you compress an image too much, the quality of the image will decline. And if you use too low of a compression rate, the image will be more high-quality, but the file size will be huge, which can slow down the speed of your website.
There are many image optimization tools out there that provide a “save for the web” option. This option automatically minimizes the size of the file and optimizes the image quality at the same time.
8. Use Images to Break up Text
Using an image to break up a webpage that has a great deal of text makes the text easier to read and understand. When someone goes to a page, and all they see is a wall of text, or if the text is hard to read, they will move on to the next source. As said before, just make sure that the image you are using pertains to the information you are presenting on the webpage.
Let Our Expert Help
Images are a powerful but often overlooked part of the experience visitors experience on your website. Investing in your images and making sure to direct them towards your customers’ needs will lead to more engagement and better results from your website.
While images are significant, they are only part of an effective content strategy. You can avoid the trial and error of figuring out the proper solution alone by letting the experts at Selworthy help!
We will talk with you about your goals and help you prioritize solutions that will yield the best results for the least time and effort invested. We are here to help you create your success story.
Contact us today, and let’s talk about how we can help you crush your growth goals.
