How to Use Visuals Effectively on a Website
A website is full of different visuals: photos, icons, videos, etc. These visuals are not just for aesthetics; they are planned, created, and implemented for data-driven, strategy-specific goals. Each visual also has a purpose, such as branding, storytelling, or navigation. Together, they help create an engaging website design that acts as a powerful tool with tangible outcomes.
Using Visuals for Competitive Website Design
Your website visuals have a direct correlation with keeping your website competitive by building credibility, improving user experience, and enhancing search engine optimization.
Credibility
75% of users judge a company’s credibility based on its website’s design.
A user’s first impression of your website is formed within moments of hitting your website. With users bouncing from one site to the next so quickly, your website must quickly establish credibility with your target audience. Visuals play an important role in this because they’re the first thing potential customers see and recognize when they land on your website.
User Experience (UX)
88% of customers are less likely to return to a site after a poor user experience.
An engaging website design uses visuals to enhance UX by making the navigation process straightforward, allowing easy interaction on mobile and desktop screens, and promoting a positive, streamlined visit. For these reasons, UX plays a vital role in designing a competitive website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Over 80% of marketers agree that video content has become “more important” than ever.
Effective SEO allows new customers to find your website organically and garner new business introductions. With optimized visuals that support SEO, you can improve your search rankings.
Pro Tip: When using visuals for engaging website design, keep in mind the small UX and SEO details that can have big impacts, including:
- Optimize file sizes to prevent slowing down your site speed and frustrating users
- Add subtitles to videos for better user focus and accessibility
- Add alternative text (alt text) to visual content for indexing and accessibility
- Add captions to images when additional context is important for the user
Using Visuals for Conversion
The goal of a competitive website is the ability to generate leads. Visuals can prompt engagement, drive conversions, and preserve customer retention.
Engagement
Research shows that, on average, every $1 invested in UX brings $100 in return for an ROI of 9,900%.
You can boost your engagement with a website design that prioritizes UX-optimized visuals. Relevant visuals can keep users interested, leading them through different content and pages. Engagement is the first step to encouraging users to take action.
Conversions
90% of the information processed by the human brain is visual.
Using visuals for conversions is an advantageous tactic. An engaging website design can significantly improve your ability to capture the user’s initial interest, encourage engagement at every step, and guide them towards action. Visuals can lead to customer clicks, calls, and completed form fills.
Retention
8 in 10 customers are willing to pay more for a better user experience.
Once you’ve gained engagement and secured a conversion, when the visuals support a positive and reliable interaction, the more likely customers are to return. Plus, refer their network!
An engaging website design can have a positive (and substantial) impact on your bottom line. Start using visuals for conversion, engagement, and retention through credibility, UX, and SEO.
What types of visuals should a website use?
An engaging website design ensures a balance between written and visual content. Your website should use a variety of high-quality visuals to express branding, communicate with your customers, and generate leads.
- Photos and images: Employees or office shots, team photos, product applications, stock photos
- Video: Business introductions, product overviews, webinar recordings
- Infographics and icons: Features and benefits, key callouts, instructions
- Charts and graphs: Competitor comparisons, case studies, data visualization
And more! A website is full of branding and content visuals with the potential to support an appealing and conversion-ready website.
An Engaging Website Design Starts with Quality
As AI imagery takes off, or when you’re searching for stock imagery, it’s essential to use and create high-quality visuals.
As mentioned, visuals have a large impact on a website’s credibility, and that can quickly diminish with the use of poor-quality visuals. Or, if photos or videos are too large, they can slow down your page’s loading times and cause a bad user experience.
How to avoid poor-quality visuals:
- Skip cheesy or outdated stock images
- Use caution when generating AI images as they can appear fake or incorrect
- Apply appropriate sizing and resolution for the web
Is Your Website Design Engaging Users and Converting Leads?
94% of first impressions are related to your site’s web design.
At Evolve Systems, our design and branding team strategizes every visual element of your website. From the hero image on your homepage to the icons for your case studies, every animation, illustration, and photo has a purpose, plus it looks good doing it!
How are you using visuals for conversions?
Let’s talk about the potential new or refreshed visuals can have for your business. Send us a message to get started!
