The Most Basic Rules on How to Use Images on Your Website

Images may contribute a significant impact to the page on your website. Unfortunately, not every businessman knows how to properly use images on their website. Done it wrongly, your images will fail your website instead of boosting it. So here is the rule to live by:

1. Make Sure It is Legal

Using copyrighted images is risky as you can be sued for infringement. Therefore, the very first rule in using images for your website is to make sure you use a legal one.

The most ideal images are the ones you created yourself. Not only it would be original, it would also match your website more perfectly in so many ways. But if this option is not possible with your current situation, then your second option is to download the legal ones from something called stock photo website.

Stock photo website is a website that supply abundant amounts of images that people can download legally to be used on their own websites. Some photos are available for free while some others come with certain price. Of course, the paid ones are usually better.

 

2. Quality Should be Excellent

Avoid using images with blurry focus, imbalance composition, or any other imperfection that makes the images look not so attractive. Images are leaving impression faster than words so you need them to look real nice to makes your visitor stay.

 

3. Focus on Your Main Goal

Each time you plan to upload an image on your website, ask yourself this question: what do you need this image for? Is it to support the content article? Is it a branding purpose?

Don't use the reason "this image looks good and I think people would love to see this". If your image doesn't serve your main goal, it will instead distract your visitors. Know what you need to reach. The image is supposed to be a tool to help you reach your goal.

 

4. Check the Color

Your website was designed with a color palette. So when you post images on it, make sure you don't mess up with the color harmony.

If your image don't have the color composition that matches with your web design, you can try recolor it. Another solution is to add frame around your image to unite the harmony. Check your overall look of your page to make sure if it looks awkward or not.

If you post more than one image on a page, make sure if all the images are still harmonious in colors.

 

5. Resize It Optimally

The file size of your images are crucial too. If your image is too small, your visitors will not be able to see it clearly. On the other hand, too big of an image will take longer time to load.

You need to consider many things that may affect your image's file size such as resolution, color depth, format, etc. Edit your image accordingly and have it resized just as you need using a software.

 

6. Write Your Alt Tags

Alt tags is a series of short text written to describe an image. Writing alt tags with the keywords of your content will get your image to appear on search engine results when they type the right keyword on the search box. By all means, alt tags enhance the SEO of your website.

 

Special Tips For E-Commerce

Most of the time, images serve to support the content and enhance the aesthetics. But in e-commerce website, images may hold a more crucial role in generating leads. If the images are convincing, people would likely to buy the product. So these are what you need to do:

1. Be Generous with Detail Images

When people see your product images, they would wish to see it as detailed as possible. By providing as much detail image of your products, visitors will find your website reliable and professional. Next time they need to buy something, they will likely come back to your website.

 

2. Brand Your Images

Protect your images to be taken by your competitors selling the same products as you. You can simply put watermark with your company label on your images. This way, anyone seeing the images will know where they have to go.

This simple trick is mostly important if your products are self-manufactured. Not only will you protect your images from being infringed, you will also protect your product from plagiarism.

 

Many businessmen fail to put up enough effort when putting up images on their websites. Little did they know how far their website can go had they known how to properly use images on their websites.