Marketing your business online is no walk in the park. With such extensive competition, you simply can’t afford to fall short in any aspect of your interaction with customers. It’s not enough to produce or stock a great product or offer a valuable service, you have to consider how you can best serve your customers throughout the entire shopping experience.
The first step is to grab the attention of potential buyers. This might be through social media, networking, flyers, sponsorship or a wealth of other marketing options. The most common next step is for them to visit your website.
A visitor could arrive on any page of your website and instantly they should see what they are looking for; relevant content. As the human brain can process visual images at a considerably faster rate than written text, the visitor is likely to make an initial judgement based on the pictures alone.
If they like what they see, they are willing to engage in reading text, watching a video or searching your products. If your images, icons or illustrations aren’t up to scratch, they are likely to leave your site in favour for another.
The Importance of High Quality Images
All too often the images on a website fall short of expectations. Some common issues are detailed below:
Poor Quality Images
A few snaps of your top selling products aren’t going to cut it. We’ve seen far too many websites with blurred images, dark and shadowy pictures or those which simply fail to communicate the right message. If you want to portray your company as professional, this needs to be clearly communicated in the images. High-resolution pictures are essential for website design.
Incorrectly Edited Images
Stretching, zooming or cropping images to make them fit is another mistake. We’ve seen many distorted images on the web. If you have great pictures, you want to show them off in their full glory, rather than tamper with them.
Stock Images
If there is one thing that you need to do to stand out from the online competition, it is to create original content. This applies to images as much as copy. Whilst stock images are high quality, they are far from unique. They tell the viewer nothing about your company and the same images could be on other websites that they have recently viewed.
Hiring a Professional
If you are proud of your products and services, a website provides the ideal platform to showcase them to the world. As 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual, investment in the services of a professional photographer or illustrator is an important consideration. With the right equipment, knowledge and expertise, a professional can produce unique visual content that is of an exacting standard and has been professionally edited to the dimensions you require.
Great images will help to attract, engage and convert visitors to customers. This will ensure that the cost of hiring a professional is soon covered by an increase in sales.
Most web design companies will be able to recommend local photographers or illustrators who can help you put your products on the map. For more advice on website design, click here.
