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Wow! Podcast #35 already! We are loving doing these and the interaction we are getting with all of you worldwide. Today we are looking at using images for your website, you will learn;
- Why images are so important for online marketing.
- Where to get these images for the best results.
- What tools you can use to create your own images.
Firstly, what have Heather and Andrew learnt over the last week? Heather has been using Lead Pages, a program that allows people to create pages quickly and easily for their website. What she loves about it is that there is a page available to use as a welcome gate on your website, to encourage people to sign up for events or free giveaways on their first visit. It basically will sit in front of your home page and give people a ‘sign up’ or ‘no thanks, take me to the website’ option.
Andrew went to an expo in Las Vegas. He learnt that many people who exhibit at these expos don’t use any form of lead generation, despite having a captive audience in front of them. Over 90% of people were just sitting behind their booth on mobile phones etc and not even interacting with people. His client that was there was using lead generation strategies that had been put in place beforehand and was very successful in collecting targeted leads. Andrew was even able to create a new page for him using Lead Pages just at lunchtime! This is a great tool so check it out if you are needing landing pages or launch pages etc.
So, why are images so important in online marketing?
- Keep people on your website longer.
- People click on images more than text links – important to lead them through your site
- Social Media engagement increases with images and people are more likely to share.
- Pinterest has promoted the use of imagery on more social sites, such as Twitter. (Check out our episode #34 for our interview with Pinterest expert Laura Waage).
Check out these stats on why images are more and more important; (shout out to JeffBullas.com for some of these!)
- 10% of all photos taken in the history of man were taken in the last 12 months!
- Posts with images get 94% more total views.
- Including a photo and a video in a press release increases views by over 45%.
- 60% of consumers are more likely to contact a local business if an image shows up in search results.
- In an ecommerce site 67% of consumers say that the quality of an image is important in choosing to buy the product.
- In an online store, customers think that product images are more important than product information.
- Engagement rate for photos on Facebook averages 0.37% whereas for text it is 0.27%. This averages to a 37% higher level of engagement for photos over text.
So, if you are looking for great photo content, where can you find these photos? It is important now more than ever to include original images to improve your search engine rankings. Many people use Google images but one of the things you really have to be careful of is that Google knows when it has been used before. If you drag the image into the search bar it will give you a list of the sites where this image has been used. You can also use a website called tineye.com to find these details out.
Here are some great places for original images;
- Your own! Taken on your phone or camera…
- iStockPhoto
- Shutterstock – the difference between free and paid images is that if you have paid, you have bought the rights to use the image. It gives you confidence as a business person that you have every right to use the image. The price options vary according to popularity and download size. High resolution images (to be used for print) cost more.
There are some great tools that you can use to change around photos and make them unique. For example, changing backgrounds, adding overlays, creating collages or adding frames, text and decals. Here are some we use…
- Photoshop (you need to buy this – offline program)
- Pic Monkey (free or paid version – online program)
- Pixlr (free or paid version – online program)
- Photogramio (free – online program)
- Pic Resize (free – to resize images – online program)
- A Beautiful Mess (phone app – allows you to doodle on top of images)
Things to consider when putting images on your website;
- Keep images relatively small – you don’t want the loading time of your page to be slowed down by large images.
- Remember to keep them original – your own ideas, text filters etc.
- Start your own stock pile by taking interesting photos of things you notice around – easy to do if you are carrying a smart phone anyway!
Fiverr Gig of the Week; If you don’t want to use photo tools yourself, check out fiverr – here’s one we had done!
