Image by carf

Photos on your website are a great way to convey a message or tell an instant story to your website’s visitor.

These photos are part of your sales tools.

Of course if you have products you’re selling, you should include pictures. But I’m talking about pictures that tell a story to your visitor. The ones that spark emotional responses.

Be sure, however, the picture will convey the response you want your visitor to have. A poorly lit, slightly out of focus, or too busy photo may give your visitor a confused feeling. I have a saying which if you follow my blog and forum posts, you’ll probably see quite often: a confused mind always says no.

Pictures Of Faces

One of the most powerful photographs you can use to tell a story are pictures of faces. Perhaps it’s because we can relate to people and can read their expression and reminisce about times we’ve had that face.

Close ups of facial shots are better than ones people have to pull up their glasses, lean toward the screen, and squint to see.

Getting your visitor to relate to content and images on your website is a great way to gain a little trust from your visitor. And when your customers trust you, they will buy - even if you don’t offer the best deal in town.

Pictures Of Product Use

Another powerful image you can convey to your website visitor is the use of showing a person using your product in a way that makes their lives a little easier. If you’ve done your marketing right, you’ve attracted a person who actually needs your product or service. So show them how your product makes the person in the photograph’s life a little easier.

Your site’s visitor should then relate in some way and move themselves one step closer to purchasing from you.

Things To Remember

Number of pictures

Be careful how many pictures you use on any give web page. Pictures take time to download and can slow up load time of your website. As a general rule, if your website takes longer than 8 seconds to load, many people will click away.

Also, too many pictures that aren’t product-related can cause a distraction and in turn hurt your chances for a sale. Pictures should enhance your content and not the other way around (unless your site is about art or pictures or something of that nature).

Content is king. Pictures are not.

Files Sizes

Keep your picture file sizes to around 100k or less. If you must show large pictures for some reason, then create a smaller version of the picture and make it clickable to the enlarged version for people who are interested to see.

More Tips

• Remember print photos don’t always work as well on websites as they do shown in person.
• Use programs like Fireworks and Photoshop to resize photos and optimize them for quicker load times.
• Sometimes it’s ok to tell your reader what you want them to read into your photo by adding a caption to it.
• If you place a photo on a web page that people are likely to print out, make sure the photo looks decent in a black and white print.
• Crop out distractions in photos that take away from the message you’re trying to tell.

Do you have any tips to add to this?

Finding Photos To Use On The Web

Here are a few places you can find photos to use on your website:

• Getty Images
• iStockphoto
• dreamstime
• Flickr - Be sure to choose “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content.”
• Google Images
• Yahoo Images

Skellie wrote an excellent article entitled A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images which you might also find useful.

For a few tips I posted in our community forum on crafting text for your website, click here.

So here’s a question for you: If you put photos on your website regularly, how and where do you find them?