What exactly is a high-quality image?
Sharpness, relevance, and speed are the three main components.
Sharpness: The highest resolution photos should be used for digital designs because you want users to see crisp, clear images. When you display blurry or skewed images on your website, you instantly lose credibility. When working with a professional photographer, always request “High-Res” file versions, and when taking photos on your phone, make sure to save and send the largest file sizes.
Relevance: If the images chosen are irrelevant to the surrounding information, they will only confuse the customer, cause them to lose interest, take up space on your site, and reduce the professional feel of your website. Make certain that each image is carefully chosen with a specific purpose in mind.
Speed: While it is important to have as large an image as you feel necessary on your site, it is also critical that the image has fully loaded by the time the user is viewing it on their screen. As a result, an important balance between image quality and the image size is achieved. The bottom line is that one should strive for the smallest image size possible while maintaining image quality.
Why is it important to have high-quality images on your website?
High-Quality images improve user experience
Consider a time when you were researching something on the internet as a user. You’re more likely to stay on a website with comprehensive information and supplemental images that connect to the information if you were clicking through websites in Google search results to find your answer. Furthermore, high-quality images allow users to form an informed opinion about the worth of your site. So it stands to reason that the higher the quality of the images on your website, the better the experience for any user who visits your site.
User’s attention span
The average internet user’s attention span is short in this day and age. With the rise of social media platforms such as Snapchat and Tiktok, we’ve become accustomed to receiving information in 10-15 second videos. As a result, users will spend less time scrolling through your website on average. According to a Nielsen Group study, the average user decides whether or not to stay on a website within 10-20 seconds. In addition, humans can process images 60,000 times faster than text. As a result, it is clear that including high-quality images on your site is critical for capturing and retaining the user’s attention.
High-quality images improve Seo
When it comes to SEO, the phrase “high-quality images” has two meanings. Although search engine bots cannot see the images on your website, they can read image tags, captions, alt text, and another textual context for an image. This is why, when adding images, several additional factors must be considered. Make sure the alt text (image description text for visually impaired users) and image keywords are relevant to the image. And the image’s file name should be descriptive of the image. Furthermore, images improve a site’s bounce rate. The bounce rate is the average time it takes for a user to leave a website after visiting it. As a result, it is critical to have high-quality images that draw the user in and keep them there, lowering the bounce rate.
Improve user engagement
Visual information is processed 60,000 times faster than textual information, as previously stated. This can be used to increase user engagement. It is easier to tell the story of your business and/or demonstrate the services your business has to offer by including high-quality images that describe it. High-quality images for websites are much more likely to entice and retain visitors. And the quality of engagement rises in direct proportion to the quality of the images.
Website images of high-quality increase conversion rate
High-quality images are essential for engaging users and encouraging them to stay on your website longer. High-quality images increase conversion rates by bringing more users to your site, giving them more chances to convert. Quality images reduce bounce rates, increasing traffic. And images allow you to communicate with your customers more clearly and intimately, which improves the customer-business relationship and increases the likelihood of conversion.
Conclusion
We understand the importance of high-quality images at Hosting Australia. Changing, adding, or rearranging images on your website can significantly improve both customer engagement and SEO visibility.
If you need help improving your images and making changes to your website. Our in-house web development team will gladly assist you with any request.