Fresh year, fresh outlook!
If you’re anything like us, you’ve started the year considering what changes – even small ones – you might make to refresh your website and/or digital brand.
When it comes to web design, take it from us: the visuals you use are just as important as the text. A website’s images can be the deciding factor in whether a visitor sticks around or clicks away. Not only do images affect the overall user experience, but they also play a significant role in your site’s SEO.
Put simply, images are a critical component of your website’s design, contributing to both aesthetics and functionality. Here’s why choosing the right images matter:
- User Experience (UX): The right images can improve the overall user experience, helping visitors engage with your content more effectively. Well-chosen images add context and visual appeal to your site, making it easier for users to navigate and interact.
- SEO optimisation: Images aren’t just there to make your website look nice. Search engines also index images, and how you optimise them can impact your rankings. Properly optimised images can help drive more organic traffic to your site.
- Conversion rates: A strong visual strategy can directly affect your conversion rates. Studies show that high-quality images help build trust, leading to more sign-ups, purchases, and overall conversions.
Unfortunately, many businesses make common mistakes when selecting images for websites. From images of poor resolution to painfully slow loading times, these mistakes can harm both your site’s user experience and your search engine rankings.
In this handy guide, we’ll walk you through how to pick images for your website while avoiding common pitfalls that could sabotage your SEO and conversion rates.
Ready? Let’s go!
Website Image Tip 1: Choose high-quality images
The quality of the images you select for your website plays a significant role in creating a polished, professional appearance. High-resolution images help convey trust and authority, enhancing the overall look and feel of your site.
Why is image quality so important for a website?
In short, high-quality images are essential for creating a professional-looking website. Blurry, pixelated, or low-resolution images can make your site appear untrustworthy and unprofessional. They can also annoy, confuse and frustrate visitors, leading them to abandon your site before taking any action.
Ever stumbled across an annoying website? Put yourself in your user’s shoes. When it comes to unappealing websites, we’ve all been there!
How can low-quality images hurt my SEO?
Search engines always take user experience into account when ranking pages. If visitors leave your website quickly due to low-quality visuals, it can signal to search engines that your site isn’t offering a good user experience. This, in turn, can negatively affect your SEO rankings. A website with clear, crisp images will keep visitors on the page longer, reducing your bounce rate (when visitors arrive at a website and promptly leave) and helping your SEO efforts.
How can I improve the quality of my images?
There are several ways to ensure the images you use are of sufficient quality:
- Resolution: Make sure your images are at least 1200px wide for a sharp, clear look on desktop screens
- Compression: Use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to compress images without losing quality, reducing load times without sacrificing the visual appeal of your page
- Consistency: As well as focusing on your visuals, ensure consistency in style and tone across your website – this helps create a cohesive design that enhances the user experience
Website Image Tip 2: Optimise image size for faster load times
Do you have a need for speed? Your users certainly do!
Speed is a key factor in user experience, and image size directly impacts how fast your website loads. By optimising your images, you can improve page speed, reduce bounce rates, and create a seamless browsing experience.
Why should I care about image size?
When it comes to website performance, there can be no doubt that faster is always better. Pages with large image files take longer to load, which in turn can be frustrating for visitors. Slow-loading websites are more likely to have high bounce rates, which negatively affect both user experience and SEO rankings.
How does slow loading impact SEO?
Search engines, including Google, use page speed as a ranking factor. A slow website can result in poor user engagement and hinder your SEO efforts. The faster your site loads, the more likely users are to stay and engage with your content, which ultimately improves your search engine rankings.
How can I optimise my images for speed?
Here are some tips to optimise your images for faster load times across the board:
- Image compression: Compress your images to reduce their file size without losing too much quality.
- Correct file formats: Use JPEG for photos, PNG for graphics with transparent backgrounds, and WebP for the best of both worlds in terms of quality and file size
- Lazy loading: Implement lazy loading, so images only load as they come into the user’s view – this speeds up initial page loading times
Want to learn more about file formats? Check out our dedicated file formats blog.
Website Image Tip 3: Ensure images are relevant to written content
Relevance is critical when choosing images for your website. Visuals should complement and enhance your content, providing context and meaning while reinforcing the message you’re trying to convey.
Why do images need to be relevant?
You heard it here first: relevance is key when selecting images. A picture of a generic stock photo that doesn’t align with your content can confuse visitors and harm the clarity of your messaging. On the other hand, well-chosen images that match your text can enhance your message and make your content more interesting, something we should all strive for!
How can irrelevant images affect SEO?
Picture this: you arrive at a website about dogs, and the first thing you see is an image of a cat. What does this signal to you about the company’s professionalism and attention to detail?
Not a good sign, is it!
And it gets worse. Images that don’t align with the content or user intent can also confuse search engines. If you use irrelevant images and fail to provide alt tags, Google may struggle to understand your content, and it could affect your rankings. In contrast, when images are directly related to the content on the page, they help search engines understand your page better and improve your SEO efforts.
How can I make sure my images are relevant?
Consider the following:
- Context: Ensure images match the topic and tone of your content (for example, if you’re writing a blog post about web design tips, use images related to web design, not irrelevant stock images)
- Authenticity: If possible, use custom or branded images that reflect your company or product (original images make your website feel more genuine and trustworthy)
- User intent: Think about what your visitors are searching for and choose images that align with their needs
Website Image Tip 4: Add alt text to your images
Alt text serves a dual purpose: improving accessibility for those with visual impairments and boosting your site’s SEO by helping search engines understand your images. It’s a simple step that can make a big impact on your site’s performance.
What is alt text and why is it important?
Alt text is a description added to an image’s HTML code. It serves as a text alternative to the image for screen readers, making your website more accessible to people with visual impairments. Alt text also helps search engines understand the content of your images, which can improve your site’s SEO. It’s a handy little device, that’s for sure!
How does alt text affect SEO?
Alt text is indexed by search engines, so it really is an important albeit easily forgotten part of your SEO strategy. Without proper alt text, search engines can’t ‘see’ your images, which in turn can hurt your rankings. Including relevant keywords in your alt text can help improve the visibility of your images in image search results and drive more traffic to your site. Win!
How do you write good alt text?
Here are some tips for writing brilliant and effective alt text:
- Be descriptive: Describe the image accurately and clearly and try your best to avoid using vague descriptions like “image 1” or “photo”
- Use keywords: If possible, include relevant keywords naturally in your alt text
- Keep it short: Alt text should be concise but descriptive (typically under 125 characters)
Website Image Tip 5: Avoid overuse of stock images
Stock images can be convenient, but they can also create a sense of disconnect with your audience. Striking a balance between original and stock images ensures your website feels authentic and engaging.
What are stock images?
Stock images are images that users can license for creative use, often online. For example, instead of hiring a photographer, sometimes users will subscribe to what tend to be large, digital databases of photos to find one (or many) that work well for their project.
Are stock images okay to use on a website?
While stock images can obviously be convenient, they can also detract from your website’s authenticity. Overusing stock images can make your website feel boring, generic and less personal, which, as you can imagine, could negatively affect user trust.
How can using stock images affect my brand?
Your website is a reflection of your brand, and overusing stock photos can make it feel disconnected from your brand’s identity. Visitors may even notice the same stock images used across multiple websites (yikes!), which also reduces the uniqueness of your content.
What are some alternatives to stock images?
Here’s what you can do:
- Use original photos: Invest in custom photography that aligns with your brand’s identity
- Personalise stock images: If you really need to use stock photos, try to personalise them by adding your own branding or making subtle changes to make them unique
- As a web designer’s advice: At Digital Rescue, we specialise in helping our clients pick beautiful, relevant and unique imagery for their website – just shoot us an email or give us a call!
Website Image Tip 6: Use images that are mobile-friendly
As mobile browsing continues to grow, it’s crucial that your images are optimised for those smaller, peskier screens. Mobile-friendly images help ensure that your website looks great and functions smoothly on all devices.
Why is mobile optimisation important?
It’s true: more people are browsing the web on mobile devices than ever before. It is, therefore, absolutely critical to ensure your images are optimised for mobile users. Large images that look okay on a desktop can appear distorted or take too long to load on mobile devices, something we all need to avoid.
How do you optimise images for mobile?
Here’s how to optimise your images for mobile:
- Responsive design: Make sure your website is responsive so images automatically adjust to fit different screen sizes
- Test for different devices: Check how your images look across various devices (smartphones, tablets, desktops) to ensure a seamless experience for all users
- Ask an expert: At Digital Rescue, we love working closely with clients to ensure your image selections work beautifully across various devices. If you’re not sure where to start with optimising your selected images for use on multiple devices, drop us a line today and we’ll help you get started.
A final thought from us on selecting images for your website
Choosing the right images for your website is about more than just aesthetics. Images can have a profound impact on user experience, SEO, and your conversion rates. By following the tips outlined in this guide, you can select images that not only look great but also help you achieve better search engine rankings and improved engagement from your visitors.
Remember: high-quality, relevant images that are optimised for speed and mobile devices are essential for a successful website. In short, don’t overlook the power of visuals. By picking the right images and avoiding common mistakes, you can enhance your site’s effectiveness and keep visitors coming back for more, time and time again!
Need help picking the right images for your website? Reach out to our team today. We’d love to help.
