Importance of Images on a Website: Explained

We want you to imagine a website without images, just words and information everywhere. Would you enjoy reading the content on this website? It is not likely. Would you ever come back to visit this website? The answer is more than likely negative. This is the potential of using images on a website; it will retain your users, keep them engaged, they will have a good experience, and will come back. It doesn’t matter how much value your website provides; users won’t find it engaging if it lacks accurate images.

Humans remember what they see better than what they read or hear. Choosing the right images and using them on your website will always positively impact your growing business. Images are equally important as words. They help get the message across the screen efficiently. A website with images would look more varied, impressive, and presentable. And users would stay longer at your website because it was engaging enough for them to continue scrolling. In a nutshell, websites need to be interactive to keep the user engaged. Below mentioned are a few benefits of using images on a website.

Benefits of Using Images on a Website

They result in more sales conversions.

Users are more likely to engage with the website if it has visually appealing images. Getting the user hooked to the website could be a tough job, especially when one has so many competitors, but it can be done quickly when one intelligently uses images. If you use eye-pleasing photos for your website, you will get more clicks, therefore, more sales conversion.

People connect better with images.

When using images for the website, one thing is sure to happen: people will connect more with your brand or business. With the help of accurate images, the website can portray its journey or share its story with the world, and users will be able to understand it more easily. 

Every business has some story behind it; yours must have one too, so share it with the world through images. When using images, try to use the ones that have real people in them because people connect better with people. Your user will connect more with the image that way.

They provide a better user experience.

When a user visits your website, you need to ensure they have a great time on it and do not face any problems while surfing through it. Because a great user experience design is what you need to level up your game and be a few steps ahead of your competitors, and images have proven to be great at grabbing attention.

It makes the website more appealing and exciting.

This point is indisputable because we all know that users will return to your website if it is visually appealing and equally engaging. They will return to your website because they would have loved the experience in the first place itself. Using the appropriate images can change the whole game for your website. And that’s the power that images hold.

Images improve SEO

If you use a picture and give it a relevant file name, there is a high chance that search engine optimization will be improved for your website. Once that’s done, you add a title and description to the image, and the search engine scans them; that’s one of the most efficient ways to get your website to pop up on the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) and, thus, get more traffic. Let us break it for you. Search Engine Optimisation helps us when we often use keywords on our website. It’s the same way with images. 

They portray your expertise.

The selection and the quality of the images you use reflect your business’s expertise. It would be best to use high-quality pictures that speak for themselves and show your business’s credibility. If you want your business to look more credible and experienced, you should put up high-quality images on your website.

They are eye-catching.

People will stay longer if your website looks good. A website with an appropriate number of good-quality images will be much more visually appealing than a website filled with text and information. Users won’t be able to connect and spend more than 5 minutes on the second website. They will feel much more engaged and connected to the first website. Thus, we can deduce that adding images will get your website more attention.

Images bring products to life.

Images have the potential to bring things to life. For example, when you just read about something, it is sometimes a bit difficult to imagine it, but when you see an image of it or an image explaining something, it becomes much easier to comprehend. If you read a text describing a product vs when you see the product picture, which will help you know more? The picture, right? That’s the whole point of adding images to a website!

Tips for Using Images on Your Website

Now that you have understood the benefits and importance of using images on a website, discussed below here are a few tips for using them:

Select High-Quality Images:

Enhancing your website with high-quality images is essential to make it appear professional and visually pleasing. When selecting images for your site, ensure they are sharp, clear, and with accurate colour and contrast. Avoid using low-resolution images as these may appear pixelated or blurry on larger screens.

Optimise Image Size:

Optimising your images means reducing their file size without sacrificing quality. This is essential, as large images can slow down your website’s loading time, impacting both user experience and SEO performance. There are various methods to optimize images such as using compression tools or resizing them to the appropriate dimensions.

Use Relevant Images:

Your images should be pertinent to your content and convey a message to visitors. Avoid generic stock photos in favour of images that add value and reinforce what you’re saying. For instance, if writing a blog post about cooking, include photos of ingredients or finished dishes as visual aids.

Add Descriptive Alt Tags:

Alt tags are brief descriptions of your images that appear when they can’t be displayed. They’re essential for accessibility as they enable people with screen readers or images turned off to understand what the picture represents. Furthermore, alt tags help with SEO since they provide additional details about your website’s content.

Consider Page Speed:

When using images on your website, page speed should be taken into account. Large images can cause delays in loading time for visitors and potentially affect search engine rankings. To optimize images for the web use tools like Adobe Photoshop or online image compressors to reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality. Moreover, using a content delivery network (CDN) helps serve images closer to where users are located – improving page speed in the process!

Use Appropriate Image File Formats:

When uploading images to your website, there are three common file formats: JPEG, PNG, and SVG. JPEG is a compressed format best for photographs while PNG is an uncompressed option ideal for graphics and illustrations. Finally, SVG is a vector format ideal for logos and icons. Choosing the appropriate format is essential to guarantee top-quality output while optimizing page speed.

Utilize images as part of your content:

Images are an excellent way to make your content more captivating and visually pleasing. To use images effectively, ensure they are pertinent to the page and offer value to the user. Break up long blocks of text with images, illustrate points, or highlight important information with them.

When placing images on the page, ensure they fit the right position and size according to the overall design theme. By employing images strategically on your webpage, you can enhance engagement levels while making website navigation smoother for visitors.

Selection Criteria for Images

Following are a few things you should look out for when selecting images for your website:

1. The most important rule is to choose high-quality images.
2. The images should align with your business or brand, basically what you sell. 
3. Make sure that the image helps you get the message across the screen to your potential customer.  
4. Show real people in your pictures. People trust people and can connect more with them.
5. Image file type should be considered before uploading it. 
6. There are some great websites out there to get great pictures from. Just make sure to use copyright-free images to avoid hassles in the future.
7. The image must be eye-pleasing, i.e., it must have fascinating colours or convey relevant information to be more engaging.
8. Choosing landscape pictures over portraits would be wise in most cases.

Why do people remember images much better than texts?

Generally, we all remember pictures better than words; it would be easy to retain a particular image in our mind rather than the words written; this is known as the Picture Superiority Effect (PSE). Let’s understand both situations. In the first case, someone tells you a story verbally. And in the second case, they tell you the story and show you relevant pictures. It is more than likely that you will forget about it in the next few days or hours in the first case, but will remember the second story longer just because you saw some images and pictures. This is because images cause a more robust and lasting reaction than texts.

It has been observed that memory retention after three days is:

1. If you have only read or heard about it, then memory retention would be 10%.
2. If you saw relevant pictures as well as read the text, memory retention would be 65%.

Notice the difference it makes in memory retention just because of using images. This is how it works; our brains have the potential to process images much faster than any written text.

Experts have observed that our brains encode images dually, whereas it encodes texts only once. As a result, when we see an image, it gets stored in our memory in the form of an “image” as well as a “word,” but when we read a text, it gets stored in our memory only in the form of a “word.” That’s how PSE works.

Conclusion

If you still think that images are added to the website just to make it look more presentable, then you need to think again. These images serve a much more important purpose than just making the website more presentable.

Images aren’t just restricted to simple photographs anymore; they also include infographics, GIFs, and other visual elements. Although selecting an image for your website could be troublesome, following the above-mentioned selection criteria for images would help. So, according to your website needs, choose whatever option you feel is the best. Just remember – images have the capability of influencing emotions and building trust with the users, which is exactly what your business needs to expand its audience reach.

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Team EMB

Our team of expert writers is committed to bringing insights on topics ranging in the fields of technology, marketing, and business. With a wide-reaching range of services on our platform, we help businesses achieve digital transformation end-to-end.