Choosing the correct product or services images to use for your website is a life-and-death situation for some online store owners.
The brain can recognize images seen in approximately 13 milliseconds. This means that in only 13 milliseconds, clients form a first impression of your brand, purely from your use of images.
Imagery is usually the dictating factor influencing your client’s actions. Impactful images will massively amplify conversion rates.
Here are 10 tips on how to improve your conversion rate using images:
1. Researching your clients
Researching your clients is a difficult but crucial part of conversion optimization. Humans are emotional creatures, therefore the emotions that images make customers feel, have a huge impact on if they’ll take action.
An image of a smiling person brings out joyful emotions, or an image of an unhappy person brings out compassion.
Tailoring your images to affect customers in your demographic, can lead to a boost in conversion rates. Leveraging these emotions can be very fruitful, it’s how you go about it that matters.
2. Considering your demographic’s state of awareness
Every visitor on your website has different expectations, emotions, and intentions. Eugene Schwartz, author of Breakthrough Advertising, claims that your prospects can be categorized into the following stages:
- Unaware: This is a type of visitor who is unaware that they have a problem that needs to be solved.
- Problem-Aware: This type of visitor is aware that they have a problem, but hasn’t started searching for a solution yet.
- Solution-Aware: Now your prospect has started scouring the web for solutions; they are aware of what they’re looking for but haven’t necessarily found you yet.
- Product-Aware: This stage is when your visitor has heard of you, and is considering you as a solution. However, they aren’t fully convinced yet that you are the right solution for them.
- Most Aware: Your prospect has now decided to go with you as a solution, evaluating your pricing and the packages you’re selling.
Once you have evaluated your prospects, it’s easier to choose images that address their state of awareness.
3. Reviewing the use of stock images
Browsing through stock image websites is an easy way to gather images to use for your website. However, most of these images are visibly fake. The use of these “fake” images invoke feelings of distrust in your prospects. Original images are the best way to garner trust from your customers, giving your website an authentic feel.
4. Understanding the importance of quality
A blurry image stretching across your website’s landing page, gives website visitors an awful first impression. Prospects will feel that this bad quality will reflect in the products or services that your business offers. Using a good quality image gives potential customers a reason to further explore your website.
5. Make your images relatable
A focus should be placed on making the images used on your website, relatable to prospects. A good image is one that your visitors can relate to, someone that looks like them. Making use of relatable images helps you to connect with your customers, also leading them to potentially share your website with other like-minded people.
6. Bigger images, bigger results
Enlarging your website’s images ensures easier visibility, providing a smoother shopping experience for customers who want a clearer idea of the product before making a purchase. This tip must be used in moderation. A website consisting only of large images will be detrimental, leading to slow loading times or just cluttering the user’s screen.
7. Choosing the correct colours
Colour might not seem extremely important, but colours have a deep psychological influence on customers. Colours define moods and influence choices, without the customer even noticing it. Researching and applying the best colours to reflect what you are trying to convey, will have a profound impact on conversion rates.
8. Showcase previously satisfied customers
Customers want to have a feeling of security before buying your product. Displaying images of smiling customers with testimonials gives your business a reputable, trustworthy feeling. This method is used everywhere, such as with silver-tongued celebrities being paid to recommend products on TV advertisements.
9. Combining effective imagery with persuasive copy
Revamping your website to ensure that your copy aligns with your choice of strategic images works marketing wonders. Misaligned images and copy can lead to website visitors feeling lost and confused. Making these changes can have a significant impact on how professional your website looks, while preserving the original look of the website.
Using eye direction to steer the customers to a desired action
10. Using images to visually demonstrate your benefits.
Customers want to be able to see how your product will benefit them. Using images to demonstrate these benefits is a very effective marketing technique. Ask yourself these questions, what does success look like for your customers? How can you visualize this success with an image? A popular way of demonstrating benefits is with the classic before-and-after comparison, showing how much better off the client will be after choosing your product.
Making these small changes will ensure increased conversion rates to your website, leading to more customers, more sales and more money!
Contact us today if you are looking to redesign your current online store or website.
