The Importance Of Utilising Images In Web Design

When you’re designing a website for your business, there are a number of aspects you need to consider if you want to get the best results.

For example, you need to think about which hosting platform you’ll use, whether you’re going to build this yourself or hire a professional web designer, and then you need to determine what content you want on the site. This could include branding, products, the history of the company and images.

Often, there is so much emphasis on getting the words right and making sure you’re quickly and simply showcasing your business to visitors that images are a second thought. However, there are so many reasons you need to focus on imagery just as much as words.

In this guide, we’re going to take a look at how and why we need to utilise imagery in the design of your website. So, if you’re in the early stages of building or if you’re revamping your existing web pages, this guide can help to steer you in the right direction.

Here’s why you need to utilise images.

People prefer images

Did you know that most people only read 28% of the words on a web page? This is unsurprising, given that the human brain processes image 60,000 times faster than text.

Is it any wonder, then that the majority of people prefer the use of imagery and are more likely to make buying decisions based on the images they can see on screen?

It makes sense when you think about it. Would you realistically buy a product from a website if you had no idea what it looked like? Even selling services becomes easier when you provide images related to the service in question.

With many people preferring the use of imagery to words or alongside words, it would be remiss of you not to utilise these on your website.

It’s important for branding

Depending on how well-established your business is, it’s likely that you will already have some branding in place, whether that is in a store, website or on social media.

In order to ensure consistency and brand recognition, you need to make sure that any images using your branding are also included on your website.

After all, you want your brand to be instantly recognisable to visitors, particularly those who may already engage with you on social media and other online channels.

It can boost your search engine optimisation efforts

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an important way to drive traffic to your website and boost your sales. However, this requires a well-thought-out strategy that puts SEO at the forefront of all your content, and that includes metadata, writing and images.

If you want to increase the number of people finding and, therefore, visiting your website, you need to make sure you are utilising images and optimising these with the right keywords.

But how can images be used to boost SEO rankings? Well, there are a number of ways, actually.

Firstly, by optimising metadata on images with relevant keywords, for example, adding alt tags, you can boost how high your webpages rank in Google for those particular search terms.

Not only this, but images can help to increase user engagement, encouraging them to stay on your pages for longer. This will decrease the bounce rate, which in turn, will prove to Google that you’re a trustworthy source.

Although it can take some time to get your SEO strategy right, and you might not see the results instantly, it’s so important that you utilise images in your web design to help boost your SEO and, ultimately, the sales of your goods or services.

They are attention grabbing

Think about it, if you went onto a website and it was nothing but blocks and blocks of text, would you stay? The answer is you would probably abandon the page and look elsewhere, particularly when you’re shopping around for products or services.

After all, you want to be able to find what you’re looking for as quickly and effectively as possible, and large clusters of text can be very daunting.

Images, however, quickly draw the eye and grab the visitor’s attention. This makes them more likely to engage with the content on your page and makes it easier to quickly understand what is you’re offering. They can then decide whether or not this is what they want.

Images are more emotive

Images, particularly moving images like videos, evoke far stronger emotions in a short space of time than words do. This is because a staggering 90% of all information we perceive and that is transmitted to our brains is visual.

Utilising images in this way means you can invoke the required emotion from visitors. For example, do you want them to feel excited about your product? Do you want them to fall in love with the story behind your brand? Or do you want them to feel like they absolutely can’t go on without your product in their life?

Whatever the case may be, using images can bring about these emotions and encourage them to not just buy from you but also become loyal to your brand.

Video is the perfect way to achieve this, as you can quickly highlight your USPs and what makes your product or services the best out there. And statistics show that almost three out of every four (72%) consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.

Videos make it quicker and easier for them to understand what you’re offering, particularly if you’re demonstrating or explaining your products through short videos.

They are better for sharing

Finally, as we’ve said, people prefer to engage with images rather than words and nowhere is this more true than on social media.

So, by utilising imagery in your web design, you make it far more likely that visitors are going to share your content with others online. This will then lead to more engagement with your goods, services and overall brand.