Choosing the right images for your website is crucial to its success. First impressions matter, and your goal is to engage and captivate users and convert them into customers and clients. Attractive, high-quality images increase the overall appeal and aesthetics of your website. Ideally, you are seeking images that not only represent but enhance your brand.
Tips for Choosing the Best Images for your Website
1.) Hire a photographer for high-quality photos. Most cell phones these days have really good cameras but knowing how to use that camera is another thing. If you can, hire a professional photographer to get what you need for the site. If you can’t and need stock photography, here are a few sites we recommend for finding free images: Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay.
2.) Choose relevant and engaging photography. The images you choose for your website should coincide with the content on the site. Did you know that it takes people 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about your website and business? You want that first impression to make a difference.
3.) Look for images with a consistent style for your brand. 38% of people will interact with a website if they find the layout or imagery attractive. Allow the images you use to strengthen your brand. Similar styled images or photography will also produce brand loyalty amongst your audience.
4.) Showcase real people and products in your images. If you have the opportunity to photograph real people, take it. Including images of people in your company’s content can enhance trust and emotional connections with users. This can lead to higher conversion rates.
5.) Choose the right file type for your needs. Make sure you are choosing the right file formats for your needs. JPG images are ideal in most situations as they have a smaller file size than PNG images. PNG images, however, can have a transparent background and are ideal for logos.
Common Website Image Sizes
The size of your images matters when loading them on a website page. Images come in all sizes and choosing the right size for your needs is vital. If you choose a small image and blow it up, it becomes pixelated on the screen. Also if you choose an image that is too large, it takes an eternity to load and that will hurt your search engine ranking and user experience.
Did you know that 39% of users will stop engaging with a website if the images don’t load properly?
Here is a list of several optimal image sizes for website needs:
- Background Image: 2400x1350px
- Hero Image: 1920x1080px
- Page Banner Image: 1920x1080px
- Blog Image: 800x420px
Once you find your ideal images, make sure to compress them before adding them to your website to make their file sizes smaller. You can compress images using programs like Photoshop. There are also online tools available such as TinyPNG and JPEGmini which will compress images for you.
SEO Optimization of Images
Including images on your website offers the ability to add additional SEO to your page. There are only a few steps to optimizing your images for SEO and being mindful of these can make a difference.
First, rename your image to be something meaningful to your website page. Take the opportunity to use your primary page keyword as part of your naming method. If you need assistance with finding optimal keywords, check out this post on Choosing the Right Keywords for SEO Success. Next, after adding the image to your website, make sure to add an alt text description, again, utilizing your keyword.
Lastly, as we mentioned above, compress that image’s file size down if you can, without losing quality. Google takes into account the load speed of your website’s pages and it can hurt you if your page loads slow.
Final Thoughts
Your website is the online billboard for your business- are you using the right images to support your message? Contact 232 Creative today for your graphic design and photography needs and take a step above your competitors.