When the Images on Your Site are Awful and Costing You Money.

This is a nuts and bolts issue - but a key one. If a picture tells a thousand words then you better make sure those words are largely positive....

So here's the story. A new client comes to us with great ambitions for their website. Working with them we produce a design that will take them to the next level. We turn it into a 100% search engine friendly website and we attach it to our content management system. We then hand them the virtual keys and the whole thing falls to pieces because they do not treat the images they add to their website with appropriate respect. Typically this falls into one of two areas. Either they select amateurish images for their website or they upload their images at the wrong size or resolution. Let's look into these issues separately.

1. Picking terrible images
You can have the best website in the world but if you select poor quality, blurry or otherwise unremarkable images to feature then the overall feel of your website will suffer dramatically. I cannot stress how much of an impact this can have. On the flip-side a plain website with effective and professional images can look amazing.

Now, without wanting to step on too many toes, there are a lot of people that can take photos and select images. There are however a lot of people who really cannot tell the difference between a good image and a terrible one. Sadly, this seems to be magnified when it comes to selecting for your own website. I strongly recommend that if selecting images is not something you know you are good at that you get some outside help.

Nowadays, there are also a selection of excellent and inexpensive image stock libraries where you can purchase high quality images for your website. It is worth checking out http://www.istockphoto.com/ or www.jupiterimages.com to see the quality of images you are able to get.

2. Poor formatting, size or resolution
The other really common mistake we see is how an image is used. Even the best image in the world can be a negative on your website if you crop it badly, leave it too large or do not compress or re-size it appropriately for the web. We commonly see site owners adding images to their homepage of more than 1MB in size. This is a showstopper for a website and will render your site totally ineffective.

If you do not know what you are doing with images then spend some time learning - if not leave it to a professional. It is simply too important.