A picture conveys a thousand words, so the saying goes. Images are a great way to quickly show what your business is about. So as you add images to your website, follow these best practices to ensure the best visitor experience, and to benefit your search engine optimization (SEO).
Make sure you name your photos e.g. name-of-product-your-company-name (Google can't read images so you have to tell them what's in the photo), and add alt text to your photo wherever you are given the opportunity in settings. (Alt text tells Google what is in the image and will be used for SEO. That image will be then associated with your site).
Compress images for fast loading- nothing kills a site visitor faster than images that take forever to load.Whilst you can't control the visitors internet speed, you can help by compressing or resizing images for faster loading. A professional photographer may give you huge files- e.g. 10 Megabytes or more, which can be great because those high pixel images are crisp when blown up to a large size, without losing quality or creating blurriness. Great for print - bad for websites.
Have your photographer or web designer compress the image size in photoshop closer to 1MB or smaller. If you have a large image, you may also want to crop it down to focus on a particular aspect of an image.
Image File formats -.jpegs are smaller in file size than .png's- but .png's are great for logos because they have a transparent background and can be placed on a color background. If you get a logo designed, ask for the .png as well as the .jpeg.
Video - takes longer to load than an image, so move the video further down the page to help with loading times of your site...If it takes too long the visitor will not wait, no matter how great the video.
Creating a video, where you talk about what your company does and showing what you sell, or what services you offer, can be very powerful. If you make a promotional video upload it to Vimeo or You Tube, then add the video with the link to your website .
Headshots - put a face to your business especially if you are selling a service and you are the main face of the brand. It helps to build trust with your customers, community and adds authenticity.
I hope you find these image tips useful as you develop your business website.