The Value of Visuals on your Website

One of the easiest ways to get someone’s attention is through the use of a good visual. Visual components grab attention quickly and effectively whether they are in the form of pictures, gifs, or videos. Particularly for businesses with complex products or services, a picture or video can convey an idea much quicker than plain text. Visuals also allow you to control your narrative much more than text, as written text can be left up to the reader’s interpretation.

By giving a physical object for the consumer to look at rather than relying on a written description, you give the user a quick understanding of what you want to convey. Many people are visual learners so being able to show a client what exactly they would be purchasing can make a real difference in both the conversion and sales process. For those who are visually impaired, including alt text to the image can help to understand what is being shown in the image.

Different Types of Visuals

Video is one of the first things people think of when it comes to visual elements. Reasons to include video on your webpage are:

• Video is the fastest growing form of online content (Source)
• They can increase the chances of reaching the front page of a SERP when optimized properly
• You can provide a facility tour, company overview, client testimonial, and process, product, and equipment overviews, all of which can be otherwise difficult to convey simply through text (interested in one of these videos? Contact our video production team!

Keep in mind that sometimes videos will slow down a webpage’s speed and performance. If you have a video on your webpage, make sure to compress your videos so loading times don’t negatively impact your customers’ user experience.

If you were unsure what a turbidity curtain was, this product overview video would help you to understand what they are and how they are used.

Other types of visuals you could also include are 3D models, product images, product specs, interactive tools, and gifs. Some of these options won’t give as in-depth information as a video could but don’t take near as much loading time as a video or impact site performance. These can also be more mobile-friendly options than video. A frictionless mobile experience is a necessity to stay competitive online, and if you have too many or too large visuals, such as videos, you will find more people leaving than staying when the web pages take too long to load.

Case Example: When we redesigned Altius Technical Services‘ new website, we included the staff’s training certificates along the footer. This made it easy for a user to see the company’s qualifications from anywhere on the website, which in turn creates more trustworthiness, improving the chances of converting a user into a lead.

Visuals On Other Platforms

Using visuals on other online platforms is just as important as on your website. Some of these outside elements can be found on:

• Google – Google uses favicons in the SERPs and will sometimes pull images from the website to include in the organic results.

• Social Media – You can incorporate nearly any visuals on social media easily by repurposing videos, pictures, and statistics. Shortening the videos to the most relative part will also play an important role in how effective your visual is and well received it is.

Pro Tip: The videos you post should be different across all of your social media because the same things that would apply to Tik Tok audiences won’t necessarily apply to LinkedIn audiences.

• YouTube – Having a YouTube channel is beneficial to your business because it is the second largest search engine behind Google, and can easily be used to help market your company.

What Does This Mean for You?

Visuals are a very important aspect of websites, social media, and ultimately how much business you could receive. Understanding how to set it up in the most user-friendly way is one of the biggest challenges but there are plenty of options out there to keep a website moving quickly and efficiently.

Considering using video but unsure how to go about it? Attend our webinar on Incorporating Video Into Your Marketing Strategy!