Use images, yes. But be selective.
I went on my first field trip as a parent this week, and I walked away thinking about the power of pictures.
Helping with a class field trip was definitely one of those milestone moments in life. I opted to play it safe by chaperoning a visit to the local library, as opposed to signing up for an all-day bus trip to a theme park. I was rewarded with a lively presentation by children’s book author Salina Yoon. She accomplished the rare feat of entertaining and educating a group of both kindergartners and adults.
Salina moved to the United States as a child and, not knowing English, faced the challenges thereof. She couldn’t read the books at school or the library. But what she could — and did — do was to read the pictures. As she explained it, reading the pictures is more than a quick glance at each picture; it’s examining a book’s illustrations with the aim of getting inside the story, uncovering a character’s motivations, picking up nuance that doesn’t come through in the text. Reading the pictures as a child hooked her on books even when she couldn’t read the words, and it led her to become the author — and illustrator — of well over 100 books.
As one who creates online this concept resonated with me. Today’s web is driven by imagery. It’s the norm to feature a full-width image as the initial and primary element on a homepage, with a few words and perhaps a button laid nicely overtop of it. Lists on websites are now often replaced with cards or boxes, each featuring a small picture.
This heavy reliance on images to tell the story isn’t bad. People are visual creatures and we appreciate what the image offers to our senses. In practice, however, the actual photos selected on websites are loosely related to the topic at hand. Instead they are all-too-often confusing (what does this have to do with anything?) or overused (I’ve seen this stock photo before…) or irrelevant (was there an image there? I didn’t notice).
Image selection matters. As Salina noted, sometimes the pictures say more than the words. As a visitor to your website the pictures you include speak to me on many levels. They set a tone (dark or light, playful or serious, professional or casual). They show me faces (smiling or laughing) or places. I notice the quality of the photos (this looks stretched), and I get a sense for how much effort you put into your image selection.
A website is the first place many people meet your organization. Like a child reading the pictures in a book, people are reading the pictures on your website. What do they say?
Need help selecting the right pictures? Let us know how we can work with you, today: https://fiatinsight.com/contact
