in Design
How To Choose The Perfect Images For Your Website
Writen by Bogdan+ / Comments Off on How To Choose The Perfect Images For Your Website
They say that a picture worth a thousand words; even if this is an old adage, in the web industry is extremely real because photos and illustrations are visual lures that capture visitors and make them read your content. If we go further and say that the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then we can bet that every viewer of an image sees it differently, so the thousand words that a person gets from an image can be different than what other person gains from it. Thus, choosing a wrong image can make your website great for some but ugly for others. Confused enough?
Let’s take it from the beginning: before you choose an image or an illustration that you want to include on your website’s content on layout, you should ask yourself the following questions:
Is it relevant?
If you want to make your website interesting and enhance the content, you need to use images which are providing visual bookmarks that are helping the user to remember and to understand what he discovered on your website. For example, check out the promotional page made by MailChimp for promoting their social feature. As you can see, the image gives a fun retro vibe which is known for making memorable visuals interactions.
Another important aspect that you need to consider is to not making it too relevant because you can be caught in the trap of making it too literal. Using images which are too relevant will make the whole experience a cliché.
Quest for the Perfect Pop
Quechua
Harry’s
Carrera World
Is it interesting?
If your image is relevant it doesn’t mean that it will automatically be the solution. If it’s not interesting then the viewer will either ignore it, either dislike it so try to be a little bit creative. Take for example a Mexican restaurant.
If you had to design a website for them, the first thing you will do is to choose an image that illustrates people eating nachos, right? Well this won’t be interesting because everybody will expect it so this is definitely not an image that they used on Tijuana Flats’s website. Instead they used the work of Alex Saviuk to illustrate it. This can be an extreme approach on why relevance should be less important than the intrigue for some of us.
5 Jobs at Octave & Octave
Leeds Building Society
DubbelFrisss
Online Department
Is it appealing ?
If an image is not appealing then the viewer won’t have an emotional bond with it. Appealing images are important especially to websites that are selling something such as restaurants or catering because they can trigger a psychological reaction in the viewer’s brain: eat, drink or buy.
Use a portrait of a mother with her child, use a cleverly designed mascot, a delicious hamburger and so on. If you have a home delivery restaurant and your website fails to make your mouth water, then there is a high probability that customers will avoid buying from you.
Athenos
Sweez
World baking day
Button’s restaurants
Choosing the best images for your website is a very subjective thing to do so before using them, it is better if you can get more feedback. Send them to your friends, family or team and be receptive to their suggestions.