Web Images and Graphics that Fascinate
How Pictures Serve to Captivate Customer Curiosity
You’re looking at your website one day and wondering why it’s not attracting more customers. Analytics report that once visitors enter your website, they don’t stick around for more than three minutes or so. You study your website again and notice the plain black background and the white text splashed over it. The content is good enough in conveying what your business is all about. Why, then, is your website not getting you more leads?
Checking up with different web designers has brought the same answer: the website is overly simple, and that it lacks pictures and other graphics. In fact, one designer baldly tells you that your website looks boring and appears to be created by an amateur. They all tell you that a website must have bold colors and high-resolution images that will help catch and keep attention to your well thought-out content.
Visitors are more impressed with well-designed websites. They are more liable to access the Contact Us page if they see that you worked hard to present flashy images supported by engaging content. You’ve hired a professional photographer to take good pictures for your website. In considering which images to put in your site, you must think about two elements: (1) images with story appeal; and (2) images that are relevant to the content.
An example of a well-selected image is this picture from the home page of thewebsitedesigncompany.com.au:
Notice the background image of this real estate and property management company website. A woman happily smiles at the one taking the photograph, conveying her happiness with the gem of a property being shown to her. The image instantly captivates the visitor’s attention. The eyes are then drawn to the marketing copy above the picture. Both elements are satisfied. The picture has a story in it that makes one stare and think about it for a while. It also meets the relevancy requirement. If the picture is pasted on a website of a theme park, visitors will get confused and be likely to click the back button.
Other qualities to consider in putting images in a website are the following:
1. Proper Placement
Imagine if the picture in the above website is not properly placed. Instead of its original position at the bottom of the text, the picture is placed behind the paragraphs of black-colored words. Wouldn’t that be exasperating to see? This makes it important for web designers to choose the right positioning of images. A correctly placed photograph will enhance the beauty and attraction factor of the website.
2. Well-worded Captions
Captions are important because they draw the visitors back to the content in your website. Once they’re entranced with the main photograph, their attention might not flit back to the content if you don’t have a good caption to bring the eyes back to the text.
Let’s go back to the screenshot of the website above. The caption reads, “ROBERTSON. PERFECT FOR YOUR WEEKENDER.” The caption is white in color, easily read and noticed. When visitors see this, they’re reminded of the reason why they entered your website—they want to buy or sell real estate.
3. Anchoring Margins
When organizing the text, always remember to align it always on the left side. Never right nor center. If you do that, you’ll make it hard for your visitor to read your company. And since web visitors have a notoriously low patience threshold, they’ll soon close the window or look for another company with a website that has clearly aligned paragraphs.
4. Upload Pictures with Care
It is best to choose carefully which pictures to upload in your websites. If you place high-resolutions in every page, then your page might not load fast enough, especially for visitors with slow Internet connection. When this happens, expect a lower number of visitors to contact you because web users are more liable to look for other websites with faster loading times.
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