Using photos on your website can catch your customers’ attention. This is why it is so important to optimize your website with photography. But when it comes to the photos on your webpage, not just any photograph will do. Your customers want photography that tells a story, evokes emotions, and instantly tells them key details about your business or product. Custom brand photography does this.
Custom brand photography is photography that is taken specifically for your business, brand, or product. The photography helps to capture what your business has to offer, what makes your business unique, and helps to target your specific customer base. Custom brand photography is usually crowdsourced, which allows your customer or targeted demographic take the pictures for you.
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Example of an on-brand photo crowdsourcing : Foap for Nisshoku, UK-based watch brand
When you are looking for photos to use on your website, you can use stock photography or images produced by a photographer. However, there are many advantages to crowdsourcing your photos and using custom brand photography. When you use stock images, you are using generic pictures that may not really convey who your business is or what your business is all about. Additionally, those same images could be used by another company, which creates brand confusion. Using a photographer helps you get unique images, but a photographer is expensive, and they don’t always have the brand awareness and emotion that one of your clients or customers has. This is why using custom brand photography is so important.
Why Is It Important to Have Photography on Your Website?
Having photos on your website is extremely important. But you may not realize exactly why it is important. Consider these two facts:
- Visitors are 80 percent more likely to read content if it paired with an image.
- Visitors are 64 percent more likely to remember what they read if it is paired with an image.
People do not have the time to open up a website and start reading each and every bit of information that they see. Instead, they only read what appeals to them. And they use pictures to determine what may or may not appeal to them. An image is a summary into the information that you can learn by reading your webpage. It tells them what the content is about, why it may appeal to them, and why they should even bother to read it. Having great images makes your website successful and captures people’s attention.
How Can Custom Brand Imagery Be Used on a Website?
By now, you know that having the right photographs for your website is extremely important. It helps to capture the attention of your audience and entices them to read more about your business or products. But how can you use these photographs, and where on a website should you place them? Here are four of the different ways you can optimize your website using crowdsourced brand imagery.
On-Page Imagery
On-page imagery is the first way that you can optimize your website with custom brand photography. On any given page on your website, include the use of on-page imagery. This basically means to include pictures of your product or service. Using real photos of the product or service that you have to offer goes a long way into building brand awareness and trust with your customer.
When using on-page imagery, you can use pictures of the product or service by itself or show images of customers using your product or service. Either way, be sure to focus on the positives of the products, how they can be used, and what benefits they can provide to your customers. Many websites pair these images with customer reviews, which lends more credibility to your product or service.
Success Stories
The second way you can optimize your website with custom brand photography is by using images to show success stories. Before people buy a product, they want to know if it really works and if it can help them to achieve the results or solve the problem they are looking to solve.
Ask your clients to take a before picture showing the issue that your product is attempting to solve. It may be something like acne on their face or a stain on a shirt. Then have your clients and customers use your product and take a picture. Maybe your face soap helped to clear up acne or your make-up helped to hide it. Or perhaps your new stain fighting product lifted a tough spot on a shirt. Either way, these photos can be displayed on your website to help show other customers who are thinking about buying your product how effective the product is and how other users just like them are having great results. These photos help to better illustrate success compared to words alone.
Blog Articles
If you own a website, you should have a blog connected to that website. A blog helps you to connect with your audience while also helping to increase your search engine ranking. In addition to writing, each blog should include at least one image.
Think about a traditional newspaper. When you look at a newspaper, are you drawn to articles that include an image that appeals to you, or are you just drawn to the headline? In most cases, the image captures your eye and is what initially helps you decide to read an article. The same is true with blogs. The images help to convey what the blog is about and support the message of the blog.
Company, About Us, and Team Pages
The last way to optimize your website with custom brand photography is by including photos on your company, about us, and team pages.
On your company, about us, and team pages, you can include a photograph that tells more about your company’s mission, vision, and employees. Show photos of team activities, your office space, and even headshots of your team. This can help those who visit your website to feel more connected to your employees and company.
When a potential or existing customer looks at your website, they do not want to sit there and read. Pictures quickly provide them with a wealth of information so they can make a quick decision on whether your business or product appeals to them. This is why having custom brand photography on your website is so important.
Custom brand imagery can be used in four different ways on your website. It can be used for:
- On-page imagery
- Success stories
- Blog articles
- Company, About Us, and Team Pages
Having the right imagery for your website can help to make your company successful. Are you ready to optimize your website with custom brand photography? If so, FOAP can help you. Our visual content marketing platform allows you to get custom brand photography from over 3 million photographers around the world. Complete your custom brand brief today and let us talk to you about how we can help you get the perfect pictures for your company.
