Loading your images to your website

In: Content, Ecommerce

A picture paints a thousand words, and this still rings true in web design. As today’s digital world has become more image-centric, with the booming popularity of image sharing social networks, such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook, it only makes sense that we incorporate these in our websites. We are, after all, visual creatures.

Importance of adding images to your website

There’s more to images than making your website “look pretty”. Finding the right images and using them appropriately on your website is an integral part of giving your website visitors a great first impression of your company. In addition, powerful and relevant images can:

Help you effectively communicate messages that are remembered by your target audience. Our brains can process visuals 60,000 times faster. Not only that, they retain and transmit more information than, let’s say, plain, boring, text. Hence, if you want to tell your brand or products’ story, or simply want to explain new features and products, add in some (relevant) visuals to your posts.
Boost engagement on your website. By adding images, you’re giving your visitors more reasons to linger longer on your website. Take a cue from websites like Buzzfeed and ViralNova.
Help you establish trust. You wouldn’t spend on something you haven’t seen yet, and so will your clients and prospects. Hence, it is imperative to add high resolution and high-quality product images to your ecommerce website, if you would like to up your chances in selling. Other ecommerce sites would even go the extra mile by adding videos on how to use their product or service to their website.
Boost your SEO rankings. Surprisingly, images, too, can have a bearing on your SEO rankings, partly because of the growing popularity of image search via search engines (i.e. Google Image Search). Google and Facebook are putting in time, effort and expertise in figuring in image indexing and ratings. In addition, the relevancy and quality of those images can also affect your site’s search engine rankings.

Elements of a good website image

When choosing images for your website, it’s important that they have the following attributes:

Quality. The quality of your images reflects the quality of the service or product your company promotes. The best images are appropriately sized for your website, and are free of pixelation.
Relevance. The images you use should add value to the content of your post, webpage, or product page.

BONUS: Make sure that the images you choose are legal to use to avoid copyright issues.

Inserting images to your website

1. Prepare your images for your website before uploading

Preformatting images before you upload them ensures that the image files are transferred in the quickest time, without compromising its original quality. For more tips, read Preparing images for your website.