We humans are a visual sort. We connect better with people when we can see them. Wouldn’t you say it’s far easier to hang up on a salesy stranger than to walk away when they are standing in front of us? This is because we connect to humans, nature, pets and pretty much anything visual. This is also true in marketing.
All of your website pages should have some type of visual aspect such as images.
- 60% of consumers give more consideration to local results that have images
- 23% of consumers are much more likely to contact a local business that has an image attached to it’s listing- See more at: http://www.brightlocal.com/2011/04/12/local-search-marketing-survey-results/#sthash.3xLmJQXQ.dpuf
Social Has gone visual
Have you pinned anything lately? Pinterest is a purely visual based social media platform. If your web page does not have an image it can’t be pinned. If you are curious as to why this matters here are a few stats that will blow you away.
Semiocast’s latest study reveals Pinterest reached 70 million registered users. If that stat is not enough for you then consider the fact that there are over 20 million active users and 79% of those users are from the U.S. If your website page or blog post does not have an image you are missing out on an opportunity to reach people.
Read more of their study here: http://semiocast.com/en/publications/2013_07_10_Pinterest_has_70_million_users
Images add meaning
Images in your web design can help you express a point. If you choose your images wisely they can help the user have a better experience.
Images can help break up the page
Let’s face it, too many words on a web page can be intimidating and images can really help the eyes flow.
Pick the right image
People want to see other people. Jakob Nielsen at Nielsen Norman Group did a great eye tracking study that shows how people pay attention to images. According to this study people can subconsciously tell when an image is just a big fluff image or a stock image versus when it is considered a “real” image.
The summary from the article:
Summary: Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to “jazz up” Web pages.
It is suggested that the image above that was ignored by readers is a pure filler image and the readers did not assign it any value.
Read the full study here: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/photos-as-web-content/
Choose your images wisely
A grainy image can send an unwanted message about your website. It could tell the visitor that you do not care about quality. I am confident that you care a great deal about the quality of your service so make sure that your images are of good quality and high resolution.
Now just to be tricky I must also advise you that while you need high quality images they can not be too big in file size. If they are too big in file size it will slow down the load time of your website. If your website takes too long to load people will get discouraged and hit the back button.
Go legal, it is the only way to go. I would be amiss if I did not take this opportunity to point out that just because you found an image on Google that does not mean it is legal to use. Please know the source and use your own images or purchase them as a safe guard.
What image would you use for this blog post? Do you take your own images? Would you like to share your images with others but don’t know how?
Love this, Renee! And love that image!
Thank you so much. It is a great one isn’t it? Images are so much fun.
It just fits so perfectly!