5 Best practices for using images effectively on your website
Visual content in the form of images can convey a powerful message in any media. It keeps your users engaged, attracts new visitors to your site, and even boosts your website’s overall SEO.
Images are always the most important element of drawing in new customers, especially if you own an e-commerce website. When used properly, you can maximize your website’s overall traffic and conversion rate.
But how do you put images to good use? Here are 5 best practices you can use to your advantage:
Use Relevant Images
Sometimes, webmasters place images on their website just to make it look alive without even considering what purpose such images serve. To use images effectively, you need to make sure that they both guide the user’s focus and convey your message in just a glance.
You need to know your niche and use relevant images accordingly. For example, if you own a website that sells fashion items, you need to pick images that are related to your business. For these reasons, you have to be really cautious when you choose images to include in your website’s design.
Pick the Right Size and Resolution
A graph by HTTP Archive shows the average size of a web page is 3.34 MB. 60% of that is attributed to images. If you don’t take into account the size and resolution of your images, they could end up giving your visitors a poor user experience. Fortunately, there are free apps you can use to optimize the file of images you have, especially if they’re from free stock photography sources like Burst by Shopify.
Observe Proper Placement
Even if you have high quality and relevant images, they would still be ineffective if you don’t know where to place them. Ideally, an image should be positioned close to the text that it refers to. Make sure you have a professional designer take a look at image placement, or you can even crowdsource ideas from your team to see which design placement style best appeals to them.
Optimize Your Images
Image optimization isn’t all about using the right size and resolution. You also have to consider optimizing them for SEO. Adding relevant and informative alt-tags to your images will allow your readers to easily find your content through search results, particularly on Google Image search. Meanwhile, it also allows search engines to effectively index your website.
Use Photos of Real People to Establish Trust
You can establish trust between you and your customers with the help of images. Several online studies have shown that web designs that incorporate images of people are more persuasive and reliable than those without.
An A/B testing conducted by Wingify CEO Paras Chopra on Medalia Art revealed a 95% increase in conversion rate by simply showing thumbnails of real people. In this example, the thumbnails of people are the artists who made the Brazilian and Caribbean paintings offered on the site. Essentially, showing the faces of the artists made everything more relatable on the buyer’s end.
The Bottom Line
Using images effectively is important if you want to have a successful website, especially when you sell products or offer services. Fortunately, sourcing high-quality images online is not prohibitive and there are many methods to do so. Make sure to use these images in a relevant and effective manner to best build trust and convey your brand messaging to your customers.