While a picture is known to paint a thousand words, it can either make or break your website. In order for your website to live up to its purpose, it has to place your brand where people recognize and will boost your conversion rates. It is imperative to strategize in finding the right imagery for your website to entice your visitors, effectively convey your brand story and make them buy from you. Further, imagery SEO (search engine optimization) is now being incorporated in the digital marketing process. Optimised images will display prominently in Google image searches, which can bring new visitors to your site. Companies who optimise their images for search experience a bump in visits – in some cases seeing between 20% and 60% of new visits coming from Google image search. When done right, it actually boosts your search engine rank leading to organic visits to your site. Its implication is that imagery SEO, when done the right way can do wonders to your website in terms of generating more conversions and materialise to the success of your business as a whole.
Meaningful, Hiqh-quality and responsive images.
Especially on your website’s landing page, it is imperative to use your own images or use human subjects to be more relatable for your visitors. The image quality also plays a very important role in forming an impression on the mind of the visitors. Incorporate meaningful, impactful images into the home page and other landing pages that make the purpose of your site immediately apparent to draw visitors in to learn more. Avoid using stock imagery as it diminishes the value of representation to your website. The images must also be responsive in terms of it being compatible with mobile devices so as to avoid image distortion. Sure, it looks good and stunning on the desktop version but looks awful or inexistent in the mobile version. This is an important consideration which your designers must be able to address.
Stay in context and be relatable.
There’s no time to be abstract or trivial here because visitors have limited attention span. Use images that already depict what your brand is and how you intend to serve your customers.An image should have one focal point. When the visitor sees the picture, his eyes should stop right on the focal point and rest everything should become faded in the back of his mind. For example if you’re a shoe company your images should focus more on shoes. However, research shows that shoes worn by human subjects or models tend to appeal more to the visitors.
Include alternate and detailed views.
For a website selling products and having images of them, it is best to include alternate and detailed views where a zoom-in functionality is made available to the visitors. Here, we can level the expectations of the potential customers of the product they wish to purchase. Also, this shows that as a business, you are transparent and dependable because you are not attempting to hide anything to your buyers and you are 100% not a scam.
Incorporate graphic icons for better usability.
Ease of access should be the top priority in having icons. Not only do icons visually cue users to perform a task but they also direct users to choose especially when there are several options available. In fact, research shows that having too many texts and lesser icons are the causes of high bounce rates. We can avoid this by making sure our graphic icons are not too overwhelming which means they complement the website text and images and serve their purpose.
Enhance scanning with smart imagery in body text.
It’s no secret that web visitors only read 20% of the text on the page, and the eye tends to gaze on images more than text. Why not incorporate more graphical elements within your body text to facilitate scanning and quick comprehension of content?
Make your CTAs visually stimulating and clickable
Graphical buttons are an effective way to direct the user’s eye toward the next step, or the action you desire they take on your site when perusing a page. Buttons that are bold, well-designed, and that incorporate action-oriented verbiage are more likely to convert your users. For example, a recent test of button designs by an e-commerce site saw a 35% increase in conversion when the site’s call-to-action button was redesigned using a bolder colour that stood out better from the text. In addition, changing button text from a generic label like “Submit” to actionable, specific verbiage such as “Download Whitepaper” provides the visitor with a visual cue about what they’ll receive after they click through, which can help motivate your users to continue, and will garner more clicks as a result.
Use three images or graphics in each web page.
Break up text on web pages and blog posts with pictures, icons or graphics. Use at least 3 images in every web page, even blogs. Sometimes it can be hard to come up with good images to include in blog posts. Be creative here! Add in screen shots of products and demos if that’s applicable. You can also include logos or certifications badges into blog posts where you’re talking about specific services and products. Smart use of imagery online is definitely an art and a science, and it requires time and thought to pull off. If you lack an in-house graphics department to assist you in making your website a piece of art, contact NGNY to learn more about our web design services today.