“One picture is worth a thousand words,” as the old saying goes. For a company’s website, an image does things that words just can’t do. They are a key tool for grabbing attention, assuring a visitor that they are in the right spot, and quickly conveying concepts and large amounts of information. Here's why.
Quickly Grab Visitors’ Attention
Your company does not have much time to grab the attention of its site’s visitors. According to an article published in Time, more than half of all internet users spend less than 15 seconds on a web page. No one can read very much in 15 seconds, and it is known that people are not reading, they are scanning.
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Images make better use of the precious seconds your company has before a visitor moves onto another web page. It would take even a highly trained speed reader at least a minute to read 1,000 words, but anyone can glance at a picture in just a second or two. In order to make the most of the little time there is before a visitor leaves your company’s website, reduce the amount of text and increase the number of images on each page.
Find a Balance
It is important to find your own balance between images and text. Resist the temptation to pack your homepage with too many small images. Larger images with too many elements can also contribute to a busy-feeling homepage. Pick just a few of your best images and lead with those on your homepage. Your product pages are a better place for lots of smaller images, front-and-back views, and detailed close-up shots.
Call to Action
The call to action (CTA) can also be an image, although it is different from the images used to feature products. The CTA image should be simple and direct and convey something positive. It should also be prominently placed above the fold. By making the CTA an image, the page’s design draws more attention to it than the text-based parts of the page.
Search Engine Optimization
Images provide an additional way of optimizing a page for search engine optimization (SEO). Over-stuffing image-related fields with keywords is not wise, but including an accurate image description and relevant image-alt tags will help search engines identify what is on the page.
Traffic from Image Searches
Images will not bring in a lot of traffic from search engines. Properly optimized images with a good description and image-alt tag might show up occasionally in image searches, though. While this will only account for a small percentage of traffic, every additional visitor might become another customer. This is especially true for manufacturers, who often have the best images of their products.
