As we all know that choosing the right images for the right audience is a key to success. The importance of using high-quality images on a website cannot be over emphasized. How do you actually know if an image is of high quality? Here are some factors to consider when choosing images for your business website:

Relevance to content

It is important that the selected images are relevant and describes the text they accompany. For example, you would want to use images that are ideal for kids where you are trying to target them. Using an elderly image in this situation might not work. Also, the image should also portray the brand message and the tone of the website. A relevant image will always give a clue on what is next to follow ‘text’.

Resolution

Low-resolution images will only come out unclear, unprofessional and untidy. The devices used nowadays have high-resolution displays which will immediately expose a low-quality image, and deter people away from your website instantly. I will personally not use an image than to use a low resolution image, as I see it as an easy way to create a bad first impression. Well optimized high-resolution image will clearly attract the human eye quietly saying “I’m gorgeous, don’t you think so?”

File Format

Using the right file format to target different audiences is very necessary. In a business environment, graphical presentations and infographics tend to engage its users without a need for an accompanying text. You need to determine if your image will be a .jpeg, .png or an animated .gif. If you have an entertainment blog, using animated images .gif will attract attention immediately, which will have better interaction and engagement than .png and .jpeg images. Both .jpeg and .png images work well for corporate and ecommerce website.

Professional

Professional images make sure that lighting, composition, exposure, sharpness and colour balance are perfect. All these factors cannot be overlooked if a high-quality image is required. While most people cannot ordinarily pinpoint what makes an image look professional, but they can often tell when an image is unprofessional.

Uniqueness

Uniqueness means that the images used are not readily available everywhere on the internet. Even if an image is popular over the internet, try to make it unique by changing opacity, adding text, adding blur or merging with another image. Ensuring that images used on your website are unique also means that they cannot be easily replicated.

Now that we have highlighted the factors to consider when choosing high quality images for your website, we also need to look at the few ways or means to obtain high-quality images:

Do it yourself

This option is very budget friendly, but not necessarily the best in all situations, especially when your requirements are very advanced.  You can decide to take photographs yourself and you sincerely don’t require the best gadget to take the most stunning images. Your smartphone can also take clear, crisp and professional images that will wow your audience. To improve the quality of your images, you can edit using filter apps or free photo editing software like Gimp, or learn some basic photography skills.

Hire a professional

For example, if you are a fashion designer, and you are looking to showcase your clothing line professionally on your website, you can hire a professional commercial photographer who can translate your images into sales. Peradventure, you are a corporate organization looking to take professional headshots of your board members, an experienced corporate photography agency is all you need.

Stock photography

There are a lot of free and paid stock photography websites. The only setback on using stock images is that you might not find images that exactly suit your needs and will be forced to compromise. Also stock photographs might not be unique as other people could have used the exact images on their website.

Design and Edit images

As part of do-it-yourself, if you are skilled enough, you could go the route of creating and designing your own images using software like Adobe Photoshop or CorelDraw. If you feel you haven’t got the time or need an expert touch at an affordable cost, you will need a creative graphics designer.

In conclusion, high-quality images can help your website stand out in your niche and amongst your competitors. A website design is incomplete without quality images. The pictures have to be used strategically to promote and complement the website’s content. Often, the major factor that keeps visitors glued to a website scrolling and clicking pages is the quality of the images on the website.

If you need further assistance on quality branding and design, or require help on implementing the tips provided here, do contact us and one of our experts will be in contact.

Images also go a great length to convey your message and set the tone for your website’s audience of what they may expect, as well as create a better understanding of the accompanying text.

There are a number of reasons why it is important to have high-quality images for your website. Here are some highlights:

Personalized Website

Putting up unique images that represent the brand message of your business on your website helps the visitors get a personal feel of your message. A business may also add pictures of members of the team and behind the scene images that portray the tone of the business’ outlook on their website. This enables your visitors to quickly get acquainted and comfortable to deal with you.

Clarity

It’s no brainer that adding images make the message being passed by the text and other contents on the website clearer. For instance, a post on how to share Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics will do better with screenshots showing the step by step process rather than series of steps without any accompanying image.

Provoke Independent Reactions

Images on their own can provoke reactions from web visitors. Just as funny pictures can provoke laughter, and controversial pictures can provoke arguments, high-quality images can increase engagement and may even be shared by your web visitors, thereby generating more traffic to your website.

Visual Learning

Some people find it easier to learn from images rather than text. Ordinarily, images register faster in the human mind than decoding text, that is, it’s easier to remember images and visual contents better than lengthy texts. This makes it easier to learn through visual materials thus complementing the body of text. In other words, a high-quality product photo will do more justice in compelling a potential buyer than long selling pitches called “product description”.

Professional Look

Quality and unique images make a website look more professional and more interesting. A caterer who uploads quality images of food and the cooking process will boost the engagement and conversion rate on her website, which also gives the business a professional look. Quality and unique images perform better on posts as they catch attention and arouse the reader’s interest. Quality images on a website give it a more appealing look as opposed to no images at all, or badly cropped, warped, and low-resolution images.

Easy to remember

Pictures easily stick to the memory. Biological studies claim that images are registered in the long term memory while text goes to the short term memory. People will therefore remember your pictures long after they have forgotten the accompanying text.

Favourable Judgements

Humans tend to make snap judgments subconsciously and awesome images provide a foundation to base such snap judgments on. When a website has professional looking images, the visitors tend to give a mental thumbs up even before considering the other components of the website.

A break from reading

Images provide a break from reading without actually leaving the web page, this makes it possible to reduce bounce rate from your website and increase time spent on the site. Images make a website’s content more interesting as opposed to having ordinary text, as it holds more attention.

Enhanced SEO

Images reduce bounce rate, which ensures that people stay on the website longer, thereby increasing the web page ranking. Images that are optimized with title tags and alt attributes are easily understood by search engine bots, which helps to achieve higher search engine ranking for targeted keywords. In other words, unique and quality images will invariably increase page views which could potentially improve conversion rates.

In conclusion, you can never go wrong with using the right quality images as it connects you with your visitors instantly, thereby winning their heart without a single word spoken. In order to benefit fully from using high quality images on your website, here is a few other factors to consider.