In these days of immense digital marketing efforts, the significance of images is undeniable. Quality imagery brings an aesthetic to your website layout, social media feeds, enhances engagement, and explains complex concepts more quickly.
With a sea of image choices, how do you know which images to choose?
Proper image selection is critical to ensure you achieve positive results; especially improved conversion rates.
Boosting conversions can take your business to the next level. Thankfully, there are techniques you can try with your images that aren't very complex.
Want to learn how to boost website conversions using images? Keep reading.
Use Images That Build Transparency
Today, when consumers have endless options for brands, why do they choose only a few? One big reason is transparency. A transparent work process helps build consumers' trust, increase sales, and retain loyalty.
In the virtual world, images showing your brand culture, products, the inside of your business, or behind the scenes practices is critical to consumer decision.
For example, restaurant owners can add images of their dining room, neat kitchens and hygienic work practices. They can upload pictures of employees washing their hands before entering the premises, wearing gloves, and using disinfectants to prove their credibility.
In the picture below, you can see how an employee at McDonald's is giving food with a mask on her face and gloves on her hands. The visual shows that the popular fast food chain takes measures to ensure a hygienic environment.
Brands can share their journeys by adding pictures of how they shifted their process from manual to automation. In this case, they can share their old pictures where staff is working manually. By the same token, they can add some recent shots where their staff is automating the process through machines.
Additionally, images of large scale manufacturing and packaging are another way to show scale or having a huge number of customers.
Use Only Relevant and High-Quality Photos
No matter how impressive the pictures are, they won't add value if they are irrelevant. Not too mention they can confuse your visitors. If you have a website of a business that sells only burgers and sandwiches, adding pictures of smoothies will make the consumers assume that it is also available on the menu.
Or, adding pictures of makeup and accessories to a clothing only store may misinform your audience or muddle your brand. If you are a clothing retailer, use only clothing images of various categories, but make sure these images are high quality. Hire a professional photographer to take custom pictures of your products if you can.
You can also consider stock photos. Most people think they are too common and using them will spoil their brand's identity. However, choosing them wisely from sites that provide images at low costs can provide you with unique and high-quality resources. Editing them and making the pictures more adaptable to your branding strategy is also possible.
Have a look at Green Garden's website:
The above image is high quality, and the text is easily readable. Good images are likely to keep the audience engaged for a longer time, provide a good landing page experience, and increase engagement or encourage social sharing. When you get more users on your website, the probability of increasing conversions increases automatically.
Show the Purpose of the Product or Service through Images
Revealing how the product is helpful is essential to catch the user's attention. Unfortunately, the attention span of most visitors is less than a second. So, they won't want to read lengthy explanatory text. However, using pictures to show the product's advantages might convince them to purchase or read the details.
Look at the below picture of Inc Health:
The images reveal that the service is about treating various kinds of joint pains. People who don't have complete knowledge of chiropractic care can understand which type of issues it can address and make a decision accordingly.
Likewise, makeup brands use pictures of models to display the result of their makeup. In the same way, spas and salons share pictures of consumers having relaxing massage therapies.
Some products provide more than one benefit. For instance, some vacuum cleaners clean the carpet and blow away dust from the windows. A prospect looking for a carpet cleaner might not know about this feature. But when they look at an image showing additional ways to use it, they are likely to convert.
Display your Brand's Social Contribution
Almost every brand wishes to create goodwill. They participate in social causes like assisting with free education, feeding the poor, building awareness campaigns, etc.
People love these brands because of their social contributions. If your brand does the same, try to showcase these efforts through pictures. Besides creating a positive image, it might result in getting more visitors.
One viral image can yield thousands of leads or conversions in no time. Share pictures of how the brand works for the community.
A picture from Coca-Cola shows how the beverage company is helping society during the COVID-19 pandemic.
People can get an idea that the company is actively participating in social causes.
Brands that sell products in plastic containers can also share photos of how their recycling efforts and contributions help create new products from recycled materials..
Always Pay Attention to Image SEO
Image SEO can boost your website's speed and help search engines understand the context of images. In this way, they are likely to index the best images.
Let us have a look at multiple image SEO elements to get a clear understanding:
Alt Text
Alt text It is an 'alternate text' that describes your image. Google reads the alternative text to understand the purpose of the image. Besides this, the text appears on the screen and helps keep the visitors engaged if the image takes too long to load. Thus, prospects get an idea of the image that will display.
Alt text is also helpful for your visually impaired audience. Screen readers can read this text to define the pictures.
Creating the alt text is simple. You need four to five words that precisely describe an image. Here are some examples:
Chocolate Brownie Topped with Walnuts
Girl wearing a Plain White Shirt
Baby boy playing with Lego
Image Size
Large images require a lot of space on the website, increasing the loading time. Try to use image compression tools to resize your images. But make sure to go through the guidelines about the right image size.
Image Sitemap
An image sitemap presents complete information about all the images present on your site. Make sure to add the title, alt text, URL, license, and a short description of the images you are using. If you already have an XML sitemap, you don't need to create a separate map for images. You can add all your image information to the existing map.
Conclusion
All in all, images can play a significant role in increasing conversions. Pictures that display transparency and reveal the core benefits of your product, service or brand are compelling.
Apart from that, high-quality and relevant images also leave an impressive impact on the audience, while great images revealing how the brand gives back to the community help earn goodwill.
Lastly, image SEO is vital. It can help you get a better SEO rank and provide a great user experience.
With all the above tips, you can now revamp your image strategy and start seeing a noticeable change.