Images can play a powerful role in web design. They grab attention, communicate information quickly, and improve the overall user experience. However, choosing the right images for your website site can be a challenge. The wrong image choices might distract from your message or even push visitors away.
This article will walk you through how to pick images that support your website’s goals, strengthen your brand, and help you stand out.
Tips for Choosing the Best Images for Your Website:
When selecting images for your website, we recommend you:
- Use original images wherever possible
- Consider hiring a professional photographer
- Be selective when using stock photos
- Always opt for high-quality images
- Optimise your images for performance
- Be consistent with a theme and a style
- Use images to tell a story
1. Use Original Images Wherever Possible
Original images make your website more distinctive and build a real connection with your audience. When you use your own photos, graphics, or illustrations, you show visitors true examples of your products or services. Users can recognise original vs stock images pretty quickly, and they appreciate them. Not only do they serve to build your brand identity, they make your website more trustworthy. People like being able to put faces to a business, and they value quality product photography before making a purchase.
By creating your own images, you gain complete control over how they match your brand’s look and message. You decide on the composition, lighting, and subjects, tailoring each image to fit your needs perfectly. This level of customisation helps build trust with your audience by showcasing real aspects of your business.
Original images also provide legal clarity. When you create your own visual content, you own the rights to it, sidestepping potential copyright issues that can arise from using stock photos or images from other sources.
While using only original images might not always be possible, include them as much as you can. They add authenticity to your website and help you forge stronger connections with your audience. Original images tell your unique story in a way that stock photos simply can’t.
Tips for Taking Original Images
Start by taking product images in a simple studio setup or taking pictures of your team at work to show real workplace scenes. If you’re selling a service or complex idea rather than a product, I’d recommend creating custom graphics that explain concepts visually, like this one from our Small Business SEO service:
Some other options for original images:
- If you offer digital products or services, take high-quality screenshots to showcase them in action.
- Show your office or work environment to give visitors a sense of place and authenticity.
- Record company events, trade shows, or client meetings to demonstrate your business’s involvement in the industry.
Don’t overlook the power of detail. Focus on interesting aspects of your products or work processes with close-up shots. These can add visual interest to your site and highlight the quality of your product. Below is an example from our homepage. We took the time to ensure the room wasn’t cluttered, company branding was visible, and the whiteboard writing was contextually relevant.
Some final tips: Make sure to use good equipment and pay attention to lighting. Natural light often works well, but artificial lighting is more consistent. Keep backgrounds clean and uncluttered to help your subjects stand out. Maintain a consistent style across your images for a cohesive look on your website.
2. Consider Hiring a Professional Photographer
Taking your own website photos can be a lot of hassle, and unless you have professional equipment and prior experience, the pictures won’t be polished. For a professional website, polished is a necessity. Your website images can make or break the perception visitors have of your brand. Hiring a professional photographer can guarantee you put your best foot forward.
Why Hire a Professional?
Professional photographers bring technical expertise, high-quality equipment, image editing expertise and a trained eye for composition and lighting. They can ensure your website, products, or services look their best.
Aligning With Your Brand
A professional photographer knows how to capture website imagery that aligns with your brand identity and appeal to your target audience. They can suggest poses, angles, and settings that you might not consider!
Equipment Matters
Professional photographers come equipped with high-quality cameras, lenses, and lighting equipment. This allows them to produce sharp, well-lit images no matter the environment. This is easier said than done.
Choosing the Right Photographer
Before hiring a photographer, take the time to go through their portfolio to ensure the images they take and their style matches your needs. Discuss your expectations clearly, including how you plan to use the images and any specific shots you need.
3. Be Selective When Using Stock Photos
Sometimes, using royalty-free images is unavoidable. But be warned: poorly chosen images can make your website look generic and unprofessional. The key is to be selective and use stock photos sparingly. When you do use them, select images that align with your brand and don’t look too staged or artificial.
Choosing the Right Stock Photos
Look for images that feel natural and authentic. Avoid overly posed or cliché photos – you know the ones! Instead, go for candid-looking shots that could pass for original content rather than generic images. Here are two free stock photos I found from searching ‘office’ on a stock photo site – there’s a huge contrast between them. One is fine, and the other you should never, ever use!
The first one screams royalty-free image and might make website visitors distrust a professional website. The second one, on the other hand, feels a lot more natural. They look like real employees in a real office.
Customise Where Possible
Don’t be afraid to edit photos to better fit your brand. This could mean cropping, adjusting colours, or even adding your own elements. Just make sure you’re allowed to modify the image under its license!
Quality Matters
Just because it’s a stock photo doesn’t mean it should be low quality. Always choose high-resolution images that won’t pixelate when resized. Remember, a blurry or pixelated image is worse than no image at all.
Consistency is Key
Make sure any photos you download match the style of your original images. This helps maintain a cohesive look across your website. Mixing vastly different styles can make your site look disjointed and unprofessional.
Avoid AI-Generated Images
The internet is becoming over-saturated with AI-generated content, resulting in two things: 1) People are becoming a lot better at recognising AI, and 2) People are getting sick of it. Even the most well-done photorealistic AI-generated images are still recognisable and slightly unsettling. It doesn’t invoke a feeling of trust and authenticity when coming from a business.
This is weird if you look at it for more than a second.
5. Always Opt For High-Quality Images
Low-quality images can ruin an otherwise great website design. They make your brand look unprofessional and can even drive visitors away. No matter where the images on your website come from – whether they’re original or stock – always prioritise quality. It’s better to have fewer high-quality images than lots of poor ones.
Always use high-resolution images. They should look crisp and clear on all devices, from smartphones to large desktop monitors. Blurry or pixelated images are a big no-no!
6. Optimise Your Images for Performance
Beautiful, high-quality images are great, but they can slow down your website if they’re not optimised properly. Slow loading times can frustrate visitors and hurt your search engine rankings. To keep your site speedy:
- Use image compression tools to shrink image files without compromising image quality.
- Make sure you choose the right image format (JPEG, PNG, or WebP)
- Check the image size before you upload them and resize if needed
- Use lazy loading for images further down the page
If you need more detailed advice on image optimisation, check out our article ‘Optimising Images For the Web‘.
7. Make Your Website Images Tell a Story
Don’t think of the pictures on your website as just decorative. Instead, they should be powerful storytelling tools. If you choose right visuals for your website and place them thoughtfully, they can convey your brand’s message and values more effectively than words alone.
Use images to illustrate your products in action or showcase your team at work, giving visitors a real sense of what you do and who you are. Find pictures that elicit the right emotional response from your audience and create a sense of flow throughout your content.
Most importantly, every image on your site should serve a purpose. If it doesn’t contribute to your story or add value for your visitors, it probably doesn’t need to be there.
8. Be Consistent With a Theme and Style
Consistency in your website’s images helps create a cohesive look and strengthens your brand identity. Choose a visual style that aligns with your brand’s personality and stick to it across all your images. This could mean using a consistent colour palette, similar lighting techniques, or a particular photographic style.
Consistency doesn’t mean all your images should look identical – variety is still important. However, they should feel like they belong together, like a well-curated photo album. This visual harmony looks professional and helps visitors navigate your site more intuitively. Users quickly learn to recognise and understand your visual language, improving their overall experience.
How Many Images Does Your Website Need?
There’s no magic number for how many images a successful website has. It all depends on your content, your audience, and your goals. As a rule of thumb, aim for at least one high-quality image per page. This could be a hero image, a product shot, or an illustration of a key concept.
For longer pages, adding an image every 300-400 words is a good guideline. This breaks up the text and keeps readers engaged. But don’t add images just for the sake of it – each one should add value to your content.
Quality trumps quantity. A few well-chosen images will serve you better than dozens of irrelevant or low-quality ones. And always keep your page load times in mind – too many large images can slow down your site and frustrate visitors.
Ultimately, let your content guide you. If an image helps explain a concept, show off a product, or tell your story, include it. If not, you’re better off without it.
It’s Time to Add New Images to Your Website!
Picking the right photos for your website is one of the most important decisions you can make. Good images grab attention, tell your story, and keep visitors engaged. Bad ones can drive people away faster than you can say ‘stock photo’.
Your website is often the first impression people get of your business. Make it count with images that show who you are and what you do., throughout your website. Whether you decide to take your own photos or hiring a professional, focus on quality and authenticity.
Don’t let image selection be an afterthought. It’s just as important as your written content. So take the time to get it right. Your visitors (and your business) will thank you for it.
