How to add photos to your website
Almost all websites use photography in one way or another. But how are you going to add photos to your website? Here are three ways:
Take them yourself
It seems like almost everyone has a digital camera these days. Whether it’s on your phone or through a higher-end device, the likelihood is you, or someone in your company, has access to a camera. So, you can take the photos yourself. The obvious advantages here are you can take as many as you want, whenever you want—and it won’t cost you a penny. However, you do get what you pay for. This option may cost nothing in a monetary sense but if your photos come from an amateur using a budget camera, it may reflect badly on your company and its website.
Use a stock photography website
A stock photography website allows you to download an image taken by a third party for use on your website. Most sites charge per image but a handful are free. Generally though, you can get a good quality photo for next-to-nothing (for example, I recently purchased an image for a client from istockphoto.com for around £2). The downsides here are you rely on the website having the photo you want and there is nothing to stop a competitor using the same image.
Use a professional photographer
The only downside to using a professional photographer is it’s more expensive than the previous two options. Again, you get what you pay for though. In this case that’s professional quality images specified precisely to your website’s requirements—and the guarantee that no one else will be able to use them without your permission.
Tips on using images
1. The adage ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ applies also to website photos. A photo of a product can tell a potential customer a lot more than some lengthy text can. So always use photos to promote your products and services.
2. Avoid clichéd pictures (a smiling woman with a telephone headset springs to mind).
3. While photos are great, don’t overdo them. You should still remember your website has a function that surpasses nice photography (e.g. generating enquiries, selling products online).
4. Don’t use print quality images on your site. An image used in a brochure will be far too large for a website; this will make the page slower to load. Get your web designer to resize all photos to an appropriate web quality.
5. If you do have lots of images to display, make use of open gallery scripts such as Lightbox or Galleria. These prevent your web page from being overloaded with imagery and can add that ‘wow’ factor to your site.
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