Want to Attract More Customers? Do it with Pictures
If you’re given a choice between reading a long article and viewing a beautiful picture with a short text, what would you choose? It would be the picture, of course. Did you know that*:
- 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visual are processed 60,000 times faster than text;
- 40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text;
- Photos perform best for likes, comments and shares;
- The 25-35 age group watches the most number of online videos, with males spending 40% more time viewing; and,
- Viewers are 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product video.
When people are reading something, they first decode the squiggles they see on the paper or screen. Are those an E and a T? Meaning has to be deciphered as the eyes move from one sentence to another. Although this process runs half a second or so, depending upon the proficiency of the reader, the mind still has to analyze what it sees.
With pictures, it’s different. The mind is quickly presented with an image. There’s no need to think much, as we usually know what a picture is trying to tell us, unless it’s an abstract work. Once viewers see photos of people and things they especially love, instant like is immediately experienced. This works for online businesses that showcase their products in a good light. For example, you’re a shoe retailer. You set the scene in which a particular pair of shoes is best suited and then you snap a picture that emphasizes the beauty of the shoes. Some hours after you posted the picture, you will see that it has already garnered likes, comments, and shares.
Effective, isn’t it?
Businesses should spend more time taking good pictures of their merchandise. Arrange your products in visually appealing ways and you’ll make them more marketable. Take a look at these goods:
Aren’t they more appealing to the eyes when artfully presented? These pictures certainly catch more interest than if they have been photographed on stalls or mannequins. Why not try them on your own products? You can either look for someone good-looking or ordinary (depending on your marketing strategy) to model your products. Or you can arrange them in a way that will make their good qualities stand out like the bags photographed above. The pinks, greens, oranges, and blues stood out against the whiteness of the picket fence.
This points out that pictures can be more effective in selling your goods. Attach well-taken pictures with your marketing copy and your products will stand out more. Long articles, on the other hand, explain in longer detail a complicated idea or two, which pictures cannot easily do. Take a look at these examples:
If you notice, the picture of the lake is just that—only an image of a beautiful natural scene. When a paragraph on the right is combined, the photo gives a different meaning. This makes it effective for photos to have a caption. Without a caption, a picture can mean anything.
Lengthy articles without any pictures are not necessarily bad and hard to read. It would be better, though, if you sometimes put some pictures between paragraphs to allow the mind to stop a bit and enjoy the view, so to speak. This will help the mind to focus on what you’re trying to say in your article.
Soften the formality of a long article with pictures. Try putting some pictures on your own blog posts and see whether your articles get more hits than they did before they had photos. You’ll soon realize that articles with pictures look better than the unrelieved black-and-white text staring back at you from the paper or screen.
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