One of the most crucial elements that people can overlook on their website is photography. Image paints vivid pictures for a visitor to your website - nothing captures your eye or imagination quicker that an image, whether it’s an illustration, painting or photograph.
It’s this principle that works for billboards, magazine covers and newspapers: an arresting image catches the corner of your eye and makes you look. The message is delivered promptly, in seconds.
Much more can be conveyed/interpreted than say, a paragraph of copy.
And for the web, where everything is searched and found in seconds, patience is something scarce. If you are presented with two magazines, one with lots of copy and one with lots of photographs, you will naturally pick up the one with pictures, it’s more fulfilling, and we are affected by the Magpie Effect: something bright, eye-catching or shiny we will gravitate towards.
Just have a look at the covers of magazines when you are next in your newsagents, you’ll see.
The look and feel of your company brand can be portrayed effectively in an image or a series of shots. People browsing the web are a bit lazy and on a mission: they want to find what they are looking for, in record time, and speed-read the text for relevant information. An image will always deliver this more rapidly.
Finally, don’t forget to tag images on your website too: we all know about SEO and having the correct search words and tagging for our sites, but many forget to label images.
This is often overlooked. All images can be tagged with meta-tags, information, links and SEO keywords - then picked up by the search bots and spiders. When searching on Google, if you are looking for photographers, it helps you stand out if you have a strong image with your listing, particularly with Google Maps.
Professional photography can help make the difference between a website visitor and a new customer. Making sure your website has the best possible images is a basic (but essential) requirement.
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