Using Photography to Improve Website User Experience
Photography is not just a feast for the eyes. It’s a powerful tool that helps improve your website user experience. See how you can use it to your advantage.
Why Photography Is Important for Website User Experience
When designing a website for your business, there are a lot of things to keep in mind. You need to pay attention to your search engine optimization, work on cybersecurity, and come up with valuable content.
You’ll also have to choose one of the numerous themes offered by content management platforms. This makes it easy to forget about, including other visual content such as photographs.
But just because it’s easily overlooked doesn’t mean that photography has no value — quite the contrary. With professional photography, you’ll be able to improve your website user experience and boost the effectiveness of other content.
So, let’s see why photography is so important and check out what you can do to make it work for you.
Importance of Photography
There are three main reasons why you should have professional photography on your website:
- It will improve your SEO
- It will boost your lead generation and conversion
- It will enhance your visibility on social media.
Images are an essential part of your SEO and will help you rank higher on search engines. Google, for example, places a strong emphasis on visual content and considers it an important ranking factor.
Since search engines cannot actually “see” the images you include on your site, you’ll need to work on your visibility. This means including alt text, title text, and captions.
Good quality photography is essential for generating and converting leads as well. People are highly visual beings and can process and memorize images much better than text. They’ll retain more information if it’s presented through imagery and will find it easier to recognize your brand if they associate it with photos.
From being recognizable, you’ll quickly move to be trustworthy. And when your leads trust you, they’ll be more willing to do business with you.
Lastly, the importance of good photography is crucial for your visibility on social media. Platforms such as Instagram or Pinterest wouldn’t exist without excellent photos. Using photography in creative ways will help you reach a much wider audience on social media. From there, you’ll boost your website traffic and increase your profits in no time.
Improving your visibility, lead generation, and conversion and SEO will ensure much better user experience. Your customers will find you online more quickly and enjoy your content much more if it’s adorned with professional photography.
Tips to Boost the Effectiveness of Photos on Your Website
Now that you know the main reasons why photography is essential for your website, it’s time to learn how to use it effectively. You cannot just use any random photo to improve your user experience. You need to be strategic and systematic.
So, let’s see some tips that will help you boost the user experience with photography.
Don’t Use Photos if They’re Irrelevant
You wouldn’t write a blog about astrophysics for your e-commerce site, would you? It makes no sense and would offer no value to your customers. This same principle is true for photography. You shouldn’t include pictures of puppies if you’re trying to sell high heeled shoes for women.
The photographs you use on your website should be relevant to your audience. They should serve to offer more information about your products/ services. So, unless you have related photos to include, it’s better not to use pictures at all.
Quality over Quantity
Your website should serve a purpose. You’ll want your visitors to subscribe, buy your products, sign up for your newsletter, etc. Therefore, they’ll need to find it easy to navigate your website and find your CTAs.
They won’t be able to do this if your site is filled with countless photographs. It will damage the user experience and be detrimental to your business.
Always make sure that the photographs add to your website, not take away from it. It’s best to hire a photo editing service and talk to the professionals who can help you achieve your goals through photography.
You’ll find that the user experience is improved with few but high-quality photos. Otherwise, you’re just creating visual noise and distracting your visitors.
Know the Difference Between Photography and Illustration
When you’re adding visual content to your site, you’ll have two options. You can either include illustrations or use real-life photography. Each serves a different purpose, and the provider of your photo editing service can help you determine what kind of imagery is best for you.
Photographs are excellent for showcasing your specific products/services. Your customers can see exactly what your products look like, or they can see you at work. You’ll inspire more trust and loyalty by using real photos.
Illustrations can be useful for more philosophical things and creative concepts. If you’re running a blog on cybersecurity, for example, you might find that pictures can help you communicate your ideas more clearly.
Avoid Stock Images
It’s always best to avoid using stock images on your website. They’re often of deficient quality and appear obviously staged. Your goal is to connect better with your visitors and inspire trust and loyalty. You won’t achieve this with fake stock photos.
Besides, you’ll lose your authenticity. Stock photos are so common across websites and are often overused. You’ll appear unprofessional, and your site will be just one among many others of the same kind.
If you want to stand out, you’ll need to use high-quality photography that’s authentic and unique to your brand.
Photo Editing Service Can Help You out
With the help of a photo editing service provider, you’ll get the best results that have the most significant impact on your user experience. You’ll receive exactly the type of photos you need, and they’ll be completely unique just to you.
Your photo editing service provider can help you with stylistic choices, and optimize all photos for all devices.
Improve your ROI, drive more traffic, and improve the user experience with professional photography that stands out.
