How To Select Pictures For Your Website

Select Appropriate Pictures.
It is no surprise that pictures are an important part of your website's content. But it appears as if many small business owners do not spend much time selecting or taking pictures. I'm going to give a quick test you can give your website to see if the pictures are appropriate and a guide to help you select the good pictures.

Test Your Website:

Selling Products
If your website sells a product then this is going to be a simple test.

• Look at your home page. Does it have a picture or pictures that show you product, or line of products?
• Do you show products on the category / product pages?

If you have answered yes to both questions, then you might think you are done. But you are only half way there.

• Do you have pages with content related to your products? (Such as how to buy pages.)

If so, then where possible try to show people using the products. You want to show actual users /customers if possible, or people who represent your audience.

For example: Do you sell scuba masks? Is there a section about buying a mask? Which picture do you think is going to interest someone more and get them to read your content?

I would suggest that all other things being equal, the picture of the scuba diver is more likely to encourage people to look at and read your content.

Offering a Service
Do you offer a service, such as landscaping, photography or website design. The same guidelines apply.

• Show pictures that represent your service on the home page.
• If you offer different related services (decks, paths or flowerbeds) and dedicate individual pages to those services then each page should have picture that represent the page's content.
• Try to show people using the result of your service - people walking on the path, sitting on the deck, or enjoying the flowerbed.

General Image Guidelines:

Here are a few suggestions to impliment with your pictures.

1. Place content in the alternative text  image property.
2. Use pictures that show people using your product.
3. Create links to larger images.
   People like to see larger versions of your work and products, so if you can provide users with links to larger versions of your images.

Obviously some services or products are harder to show than others, compare landscaper's to a lawyer's service. If you can, then you want to show examples of your service and people enjoying the results what your company did for them.