A chosen search phrase and a few clicks of the mouse eclipse the need for traditional advertising.
Print media marketing, such as the Yellow Pages, flyers and newspaper ads, became obsolete in a digital age.
Today, a customer gleans first impressions about your business by accessing your website.
Think of it as the first face-to-face encounter with a customer.
This initial experience sets the stage for further engagements, making your website an essential advertising and promotional tool in your marketing arsenal.
On average, it takes a visitor 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website.
Visually striking images and engaging content draw in customers and ensure that they effectively ‘interact’ with your website and, ultimately, your products and services.
Statistics recorded that nearly 40% of people accessing a website will shut down the site at the slightest snag and 88% will never return to a site after a bad experience.
This can be anything from confusing navigation tabs to loading speeds.
The speed, responsiveness, visual attractiveness and clarity of a website blend to form that first vital impression.
Google Chrome, the search engine used by more than 50% of all internet users worldwide, factors a website’s load time into search rankings.
A slow website with poor visual and content presentation will thus be left behind in the ever-increasing and crucial searches for information.
Your content and accompanying images work in symbiosis to optimise your website and, in turn, gain prospective customers and keep existing ones.
The importance of image optimisation
Website–building specialists forecast that more than 85% of organisations are turning to the power of visual presentations – images and videos – to promote their respective businesses.
Research determined that marketing strategies in 2021 will be defined by the use of website images and videos.
Visual presentations can be powerful communication tools, but you do not want the use of images and videos hampering your website flow and loading speeds.
Website development experts recommend a combination of selecting the correct image formats, using a content delivery network (CDN), and compressing images to overcome obstacles that interfere with image optimisation.
How visual and written content work hand in hand
People spend just over five seconds looking at the first eye-catching image on a website and then move on to reading the accompanying content.
Investigations indicate that website visitors dedicate about the same amount of time to skimming the written content.
Your images and videos, no matter how carefully selected and presented, will mean little without the words to boost and queue them in a search engine.
Industry professionals recommend that targeted search engine optimisation (SEO) content accompanies and amplifies the value of your website images.
Here are some points to bear in mind:
- Professional, well-developed content relays visitors to your website and your visual presentations.
- Search engine web crawlers use image file names to categorise and prioritise content.
- Users prefer concise and clear image titles.
- Content text enhances detectability on a search engine.
- Technology drives exposure in a digitised age, merging the need for marketing and technical expertise.
- Image optimisation and effective content go hand in hand – the one falls short without the other.
