Images: Your Secret CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) Weapon

When it comes to competing in the twenty-first century, Conversion Rate Optimization is key.  Company websites, landing pages, and sponsored ads have got to grab attention and hold it quickly, if they have any chance of competing against the billions of others being active online.  One of the biggest aspects of successful CRO is a series of well placed photos.

Website Images Get over your hang ups and make yourself visible.  People don’t want to do business with faceless people, even in the internet age, so plan a company-wide photo shoot and get headshots or group shots to adorn your ‘about’ page.  The personalization will do a lot for your business, as it gives the consumer a face to put with the name.

Landing Page Images It is no secret that a landing page will often serve as the first impression of your company.  Customers landing here can decide, within seconds, whether they will give your product (or service) a chance or if they will surf on.  Images here are important.  They cannot be cheesy stock images that say nothing about the personality and uniqueness of your company.  Inside, choose evocative images that draw the eye and tell a story. Don’t limit these to pictures of your product.  While undoubtedly informative, images of people breathe more life into a landing page than immobile objects.  Attractive people tend to be doubly as eye catching and have also been shown to instantly instill higher levels of trust into viewers.

Images in Advertisement Ads on the web can be hugely successful.  The ease of measuring success of various ads on a number of different platforms, makes the internet a dream for marketers.  However, you will quickly find that the right image will make your call to action a much greater success than the most well thought out text ever could.  The eye is natural drawn to a picture before text.  Think about it; how often do you choose one Google search result over another, simply because one has an image and the other doesn’t? You have only a split second, in many cases, to draw the consumer in, when it comes to ads.  So make the most of it with high quality, emotive pictures.  It is well worth the time and effort put into creating something original, as opposed to relying on stock photos.  However, there are sites like iStockPhoto.com that provide excellent images, at a price.

The primary lesson here should be, ‘don’t just say it, show it!’ With the right imagery, worries about conversion rate optimization will melt away.