5 Killer Ways to Boost Your Website Design with Photography
Your website is the face of your business online. Whether big or small, one of its main goal is to make a positive and impacting first impression on your website visitors who are interested in your company products and services. Just as you assess potential business partners, employees and personal acquaintances within the first few seconds of meeting them, visitors will evaluate your business within the first few seconds of viewing your website.
In order to create optimal aesthetics and display images that actually convert consumers rather than scare them away, it is vital to invest in the services of a professional photographer, one who can capture your company’s message and communicate it to your target audience through photography.
Use these five tips to ensure that your website makes a great first and lasting impression.
1. Showcase your products. Consumers rely heavily on images to help make their purchasing decisions. In fact, merchants with sites that lack good quality photography are more often likely to get overlooked by prospective buyers. Publishing low-quality photos is just as bad as publishing no pictures at all, if not worse. Hire professionals who specialize in web photography, one who can assess your business goals, find the perfect lighting and angles and make sure that each picture is showcasing your goods for an optimal amount of attention. Putting an expert in charge of these efforts can actually give you far more control in determining how your on-site photos impact your prospects and customers.
2. Outshine your competition. Taking your own photos might seem like a great way to save cash, but simply having visible images is not enough. There are a number of snap judgments that consumers will make about your site based upon the very first photos that they see. Although the remainder of your on-site content might be informative and valuable, few people will actually plod through this if the surrounding images are grainy or bland. It is simply too easy for web users to navigate away from your pages to find something more visually appealing.
3. Redefine your brand message. If you are in the process of building a new site, sourcing all new photography can be a great way to revitalize your brand. While you might have a collection of photos that have been used on your site in the past, you have to consider whether or not these are in line with your goals for both your business and your brand. Photography services can assist you with your website design so that your on-site images match your desired attitude for your company and that speak to your clients in a language and tone that they can understand.
4. Use less stock photography. Surprisingly, the best stock photos can actually be just as expensive as hiring a professional photographer. Moreover, when you have your own provider, you can get the images you want and convey the exact messages that you need to transmit. It can also take a lot of time to find the right stock photo and thus, these efforts can be both costly and labor-intensive. Getting the niche-appropriate and eye-catching images for your pages should be a seamless and easy process. Professionals can assess your goals, choose the proper setting and lighting for your images and work until you get the results you really want.
5. Don’t resize old and small photos. There are a number of problems that you are likely to encounter when attempting to resize old and small photos to fit your new website design. Foremost among these is a marked decline in overall quality. Making an old picture look amazing at a far larger size is no easy feat. More often than not, you’ll get an image that is grainy, blurry and all-around unimpressive. Thus, even if you do have nice pictures from the past that you want to reuse, this is only an effective solution to your needs if these are already the proper size for your new pages.
Bonus: Pictures play a major role in the search optimization process. Optimizing a site for search engines is an effort that is best started during the earliest stages of the website design process. Even as search engine algorithms change and the requirements for a first page placement become increasingly complex, the need for lots of high-quality, on-site content remains the same. Photography plays a surprising role in getting sites notice. This means that posting excellent pictures that are well-labeled will not only help you get lots lot of attention from both customers and potential customers, it can also help you get your new site noticed by major search engines.