Nowadays, it is essential for a business to have a great website. Consumers are spending more and more time online, including shopping and researching brands, so a good website can put you ahead of the competition in the eyes of your audience. So, what needs to be considered when you are designing your website?
The Importance of Web Design / Imagery
The design quality of a brand’s website can be split into a few different categories – for example, the functionality and user interface of the website is extremely important. It is also important that the website is informative; site visitors should be able to easily find all the information they need about your brand, and products or services. Finally, the website should be visually eye-catching – one survey found that 75% of users surveyed would judge a company’s credibility based on their website aesthetic.
We reached out to some companies with websites, who generate leads via traffic to their site. One of the companies who came back to us was an IT support provider London businesses frequently find through search engines, which means their website not only needs to be informative and usable, and have a good aesthetic.
Keep Things Relevant
When thinking about the type of imagery to include in your website’s aesthetic, you need to make sure that it is very relevant to your brand and the services you provide. For example, the company we spoke to provides IT support services in London; which means that if they used a landscape picture of a national park in America, for example, it would look out of place – instead, a landscape image of London would be relevant.
Catch the Eye…
The imagery you use on your website should be both relevant and eye-catching. Using impressive photography, vibrant illustration and infographics are great ways to get site visitor’s information. Just make sure that the imagery, graphics and colours fit together – clashing design principles will not go down well with users visiting your website.
So, what are some of the ways to get great imagery for your website?
1. Hire a photographer…
If you want unique and personal imagery for your site, then you’ll have to get it captured especially for your brand. Your best bet is to hire a professional photographer. This is the most reliable way to achieve high quality images. If you have a web designer, they can collaborate with the photographer you hire so that together, they will develop the perfect images to go on your site.
2. …Or try DIY
Perhaps you’re unable to afford to hire a professional photographer in the present. Or maybe, you have a budding photographer within your organisation already. It’s perfectly viable to do your own photography. Nowadays, decent photography cameras are quite affordable, and there are plenty of free tools for image editing – and once you’ve got a camera, you’ll be able to capture new photos for your site whenever you need to, at no extra cost.
There are even ways to capture great photography without a camera – plenty of apps for iPhone and Android are designed to unlock the full potential of the built-in camera, allowing users to capture beautiful images on their phone.
Stock Photography (Premium and Free)
Even if you’re not in a position to do your own photography or hire a professional, you can still get access to high quality images through stock photography sites. There are a number of platforms where you can pay for high quality stock images, including:
- iStock
- Getty Images
- Shutterstock
The only downside to this method is that stock photos can sometimes be pretty obvious – users online are getting very good at spotting stock images. Before you decide on an image to use, try searching for the image on Google or another search engine, and see how many sites are already using it.
The stock photography sites listed above are all premium services, but there are plenty of sites where you can find free stock images – these sites include (but are not limited to):
- Unsplash
- Burst by Shopify
