A website is a beneficial tool for promoting your service, a business, or providing informative content. However, to get the attention of your intended audience, you need an engaging web design. Ultimately, this will also help with higher search engine rankings and conversion rates.
A perfect web design incorporates accurate information, aesthetics, and is SEO friendly. And to pull this off, you need excellent written content complemented by perfect images. The proper use of pictures can add lots of value to your site and help engage visitors.
But many people don’t pay enough attention when adding photos to their website. They randomly choose pictures without focusing on the visual appeal.
To help you out, here are some exciting tips and tricks that you can use to ensure images enhance your web design further. Let’s dive right in!
1: Images Must be Relevant
The photos on your website should be relevant to your audience. If they do not feel a connection with the images, they will likely bounce off the website. In fact, they should be able to see themselves in place of your model in the pictures.
LA Weight Loss is a well-known weight loss program in the U.S. Its website offers images of clients that have lost significant weight with their protocols. Instead of choosing size zero models, they added familiar people to which their audiences can relate.
Quick Tip:
You can always use photos of actual clients with their testimonials. Since people can see a real person sharing an experience, it becomes more believable.
2: Show Some Emotions
Emotions in the images always help potential clients build a stronger connection with you. Generally, feelings that exude positivity and happiness offer the best results.
OpenDoor helps people sell their homes. The website claims that nine out of ten customers are happy with its services. Next to this claim is a fairly big picture of a couple sitting on a couch with a satisfied look on their faces, precisely the emotion that captures the audience’s imagination.
3: Use Multiple High-Quality Images
This should go without saying, but you have to add high-quality images to your web design. Poor quality photos reflect poorly on the website and can be a deal-breaker for your image.
Using multiple images is also a pretty good idea since your audiences can have a look at your products from different aspects.
There are two common sources of acquiring images for web design.
Original Photos
If you want to use truly unique images for your website, original photos are the way. They’re especially useful if you have an eCommerce store and would like to show the actual product pictures. With custom photographs, you can experiment and try different ideas.
However, you will likely need to hire a professional photographer, which can be costly. You can also expect to wait before the photos are ready for use.
Stock Photos
Stock photos are readily available for web design from different agencies for a small price. Millions of assets are available, and you can find the ones most relevant to your content. But make sure to select ones that haven’t been extensively used in your niche.
Quick Tip:
Many stock photo agencies offer data on the number of downloads on all their images. These statistics can give you an idea of the number of times a particular image has been used.
4: Optimize Images for SEO
Similar to content SEO, you can take several steps to optimize your images for the search engines. If you take these steps, you will help your website rank and improve its overall visibility.
Name Images
Images have very generic names assigned to them by the cameras. If you have a photo of a person running on the field, a name such as img_37412 adds no value for search engines. However, something like Man-Running-on-a-Track will offer helpful information to them.
Use Alt-Tags
Alt-tags are a brief description of the image displayed if the image fails or is read aloud by the browser for visually impaired people. It also offers valuable information to the search engines about the image. If you have a picture of a couple of parrots on a branch, an alt-tag like two green parrots sitting on a tree branch should do well.
Add Captions
Captions do not directly factor into SEO, but they help. Captions help viewers better understand photos since some do need context or details for the audience to understand them better. They also lead to more time spent on the page and reduce bounce rate, an important ranking factor.
Use the Ideal File Formats
There are tons of file formats available for images. However, you must use the ones that do not hurt the quality of the photos and can take less space.
For example, JPEG is an excellent option for most photos and does not enhance the file size of a picture. PNG is typically used for vectors and other graphics, while GIF works well for small animations.
Create an Image Sitemap
An image sitemap guides about image locations. These are a big help for search engine crawlers and can discover images that have yet to be indexed.
Some plugins like Yoast create a sitemap for images by default. However, they have limited options added to them. You can manually add further helpful information.
Quick Tip:
Use keywords in both your image name and alt-tags. However, do not stuff them with keywords since it can negatively impact search engines that usually penalize websites for such actions.
5: Don’t Go Overboard With Images
Adding images is essential for your web design but never go overboard. There has to be a balance between the written content and the photos you add. It can be counterproductive if you add too many images with little or no relevant information.
Also, ensure that they all have something unique when you add multiple images. It is a bad idea to post seven product images that are the same.
Take the example of The Canvas Prints who have used images that complement the text perfectly. The website carefully promotes its products with apt images. They also have very subtly placed call-to-action (CTA) buttons added close to the photos.
The Bottom Line
Images can add a lot of value to your web design and attract audiences. The critical factor is to ensure that you incorporate these photos subtly. They should also complement the written content well.
Do consider the SEO aspect when you add images to your website as well. You can take a few simple steps to help your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your website.
With the above tips, your web design will be practical and visually pleasing. Ultimately, the two factors will help gain traction with the targeted audience. Good luck!