Why Great Imagery Can Make Or Break A Website

Images are one of the most powerful means of communication. Studies show that people remember 80% of what they see, and 20% of what they read so chances are you might forget these statistics any minute now. However, to back them up, here are 5 more reasons to use high-quality images on your website:  

Captures and Keeps User Attention

Has anyone ever told you that you have the attention span of a goldfish? You may think it’s just a figure of speech, but it’s actually not far from the truth. In fact, according to research, the average attention span of a human is just 8 seconds which is actually one second shorter than the average goldfish. This poses a bit of a challenge when it comes to designing a website. How are you supposed to capture someone’s attention in 8 seconds? The answer is high-quality, carefully chosen images. Not only does this capture their attention before they’ve even read a word of the text, but it keeps their attention and means they are likely to stay on your site for longer. 

Pictures Say What Words Can’t

Research has found that the human brain can correctly identify images in as little as 100 milliseconds which means high-quality images provide an important opportunity for you to get your message across straight away. Images can be understood by anyone in the world and can enhance the reading material on your website, or they can convey complex messages that may be hard to get across with just words, which brings me to my next point. 

Promote your Product or Service

Images allow people to visualise your product and service. It’s all well and good writing about your award-winning product or your life-changing service, but if the user can’t see proof of this then it’s all just empty words. One of our clients from way back does this beautifully. Sharon from Innocent Chaos uses powerful photography of her product offering so that visitors get a true indication of what they are purchasing:

SEO  

Another reason to use high-quality images on your website is for SEO purposes. The Google algorithm likes pages that humans like- and humans like images. Therefore, pages with high quality images tend to be ranked higher on google. On top of this, if images are labelled correctly with search-friendly language, your content will show up within both web search results and image searches - which means you have double the opportunity for discoverability. 

Helps to Evoke Emotion

Last but definitely not least, the psychological impact of images is important, and shouldn’t be overlooked. Images are storytellers, and allow you to tell the story of your brand, your product and the people behind it, which helps to evoke human emotion which is a powerful thing in itself. 

Throughout this blog, we’ve referenced high-quality images. High quality is crucial. The images should be professional, clear, in the correct size and have mobile compatibility considered. Of course it’s also important that your images are relevant and reflect the message you are trying to get across.  A website with poor quality images will create a lack of trust from site visitors which will result in them leaving your website before getting to the good stuff.