Attractive images can be a benefit to any website. They help break up passages of text in long posts and help convey crucial information in a way that is easier to digest.

Ready, Steady, Focus!

There is nothing worse than a shot that is out of focus because the digital camera failed to focus properly before the shutter completed its cycle. The auto-focus may pay attention to the wrong part of the image or the photographer may tap on the correct part of the image, but the shot still doesn’t go as planned. Many things can get in the way of obtaining just the right focus for an important image.

Good Photos Made Bad, Through Overzealous Compression

Depending on the type of image and the level of data compression used on the image file to reduce the file size and loading time, it is possible that images will appear fuzzy or out of focus simply because the image quality has been compressed too much before publication.

Professional photography is wonderful to have, but if a webmaster takes the original source image and reduces its size too far, it doesn’t do anybody any good. Beware of images that started out high quality but lost too much in translation.

Photo Relevance

Photos on a website need to be relevant. Often times, people reach for the easiest or cheapest image they can find to attach to a blog post or to add something to a page, but it’s usually not all that appropriate.

An image needs to have relevance to the content or the purpose of the particular page or post that it’s being added to. Otherwise, they risk confusing the site visitor who doesn’t see much of a connection. Images can be a great way to engage emotionally with the visitor and make them want to engage with your business, but when done incorrectly, they can have a distancing effect which you really don’t want.

Generic Commercial Stock Photography

You know the type. You’ve seen it many times. That corporate site with a bunch of nicely preened (supposed) employees looking intently at the camera. Not a hair out of place. It. All. Looks. Far. Too. Staged.

This kind of stock photography doesn’t really make a website much better because it usually fails to engage the visitor when they get the same sense that it’s not the real people who work at the company. Avoid this approach at all costs.

Inappropriate Images Are Bad For Business

Whilst some people may find a humorous image funny, humour is a funny thing. That same image can come across as unhelpful, inappropriate, in poor taste, or just plain offensive to many different visitors.

It is always better to focus on business-oriented photographs that suit the industry that the business is operating in. These can still be inspirational, uplifting, or have other positive aspects rather than simply be a predictable business image. However, it is important to strike the right balance here.

Avoid Textures and Full Image Backgrounds

It is very difficult to have a website which uses a textured background or a full screen image as a backdrop and achieve a good result. The foreground containing business information tends to overshadow the background which takes still attention away from the central message on the page and the purpose of the site overall.

Even when a high quality image is used as a background, it is rare indeed for it to look appropriate for a site. If you have a site that uses old wallpaper or textures for backgrounds, it is surely time to have the site replaced by a modern representation of your business produced by Off The Peg Design.

Digital Cameras Make It Easier To Get Shots

Unlike in years past where it was difficult to create terrific shots using a standard camera, even the digital camera included with an iPhone is a good enough quality to get some impressive shots with a bit of practice. This is certainly useful when wanting to add new blog posts with images from a recent industry expo or promote new product lines.

For anything that goes beyond these basic requirements, it can be a good idea to buy in high quality stock photography that will suit the site perfectly or to hire a professional photographer for an hour or more of their time to get the shots that the business requires.

Bad photos, whether due to poor photo composition, out of focus shots or lack of relevance to the subject matter on the page, hurts the business’ interests because site visitors will be confused by the image. In many ways, not having such an image on the page would lead to an improved outcome. Good quality photos on the other hand will have the opposite effect; pleasing new visitors, making an emotional connection which can lead to new business. Better quality photos can also have the added benefit of driving new traffic to the site through image searches that people perform on search engines.

We have a huge archive of stock photography to make sure your website wont look like everybody else’s,
we also offer photography and video services too