Janric Website Design

Getting the best images on your website is essential. Poor quality images will not work and may destroy the image and scare people away. Here is why I always insist on paying for quality images.

There are enough people out and about creating websites and wanting websites created, who have a basic camera or a mobile phone. Very quickly these photographs can be taken and transferred to a computer and published as part of the website. But, this process will not do.

And here I am not necessarily talking about products displayed in a catalogue of an e-commerce shop. Yes, these images need to be clear, sharp and to work to sell the product. You need different angles and view. They need to be in focus and ideally they all need to be along the same theme. Taken the same way around (portrait or landscape), you then should make sure that they all have the same background, or at least the same theme of background. It looks absolutely horribly messy when the photos are a mixture of greyish white backgrounds because the flash is not strong enough. But I realise that for many small shops the time, effort and expense of getting the product lines photographed is too much. So here, just put a bit of thought into the photographs and maybe ask your suppliers if they can assist.

What I do insist are taken properly, where possible, are the pictures that abound the home page and the banners of the website. If a banner is being created for the entire site then it is something that every visitor will see. If that banner uses a photograph that is badly framed, out of focus and poorly lit, it will reflect on the entire website and could ultimately lose you vital visitors.

I always use professional stock photography whenever I create a website sample, along with the offer that once the website goes live, I can buy the license for those photographs as part of the agreed price, or the customer can select their own choice from the same website that I buy from.

This usually works fine, but sometimes the customer insists that their favourite snap will work just as well and provides that. This is fine if they are good at photography, but all too often the quality of the photograph supplied is below the quality of the photograph originally in that place on the website. And who is going to be first to point that out? Me, or the customer?

The thing is, professional stock photography can be incredibly cheap and fun to source. There may be millions of photographs per site, but once you start searching on a theme it is quite straight forward. If you need Moscow photography, just search for that in your preferred library.

By going to a library and paying a couple of pounds or dollars per photograph you are protected from accidentally using copyrighted material, which could later catch up on you. The library will also have checked carefully each photograph for quality, so you know you are getting the best.

Do not cut corners. Buy the best!

Keith Lunt