Build a Better Website Blog

Integrate photos and graphics in attractive ways.  Slideshows, photo galleries, videos and flash movies bring your site to life and stir interest, while reinforcing text.

Images on your website reinforce text for better conversion rates.  Pictures, photographs, graphics, diagrams all help visitors more quickly grasp your content.

Bring your site to life with images.

Slideshows reduce need for scrolling
For your home page or another page that you wish to keep clean and compact, a slideshow is a collection of two or more alternating images.  You can incorporate effects to transition from one image to another in a set or random order.  Besides showing your story, this is a simple way to bring your site to life with motion.  [Sample: http://www.pcvrc.com]

• Display products – show  samples of your work
• Examine a process -  give a visual tour of each stage of your service
• Text statements / quotes – complementary famous quotes, lists of accomplishments, awards, recognition
• Logos of affiliations – move through logos of your  professional affiliations, vendors, partners, customers or any groups that help build your credibility

Photo galleries tell your whole story
Set aside pages or portions of pages to providing enough photos to satisfy visitors and persuade them to get in touch.  A slideshow may be best for home page, but details pages can devote more space for all to display together.  Make it interactive so visitors can control what they want to view, clicking or mousing over thumbnails of their choice.   [Sample: http://www.jmweddingcreations.com/gallery.php]
• Show a process – include a storyboard from step one through step “x”
• Display o;ptions – show samples of each color, style, or other variation
• Multiple applications – Show samples of different ways to use the same product

Video can be casual
From a 20 second “Welcome” message to a 30 minute movie, allow the visitor to sit back and relax while you introduce your company or a particular product.  Decide whether to upload a movie viewer to your own server or just let the visitor open the movie with an application installed on their own machine.  The most  common client-side pluggins are Windows Movie Viewer and Quicktime.  [Sample: http://www.gndcollects.com]
• Automatically running welcome message on home or about page
• Video clips collection to allow viewing of any particular clip
• Longer movies should indicate their file size and length so the visitor can decide if they have enough time (or fast enough internet connection)
• Humorous video can entertain while explaining your message
• Include link to download (free) movie player in case visitor does not have one installed.  Never make assumptions about your visitors.

A good video can convey your ideas and demonstrate your product much more quickly and effectively than lengthy paragraphs of text.  Search Engines may reward sites with higher rankings, knowing that you’re more likely to please visitors. 
An excellent resource for online video marketing tips is http://www.ReelSEO.com

Flash presentations are fancy
Flash movies can contain a multitude of effects and can integrate video, graphics, still photos and text on a server-side platform, to be independent from the visitor’s computer configuration.  But costs can be greater to create and to change. Some web designers specialize in these sites or can create an individual flash movie for inclusion on “non-Flash” sites.

Let’s explore how to best use images on your website to reinforce the text for better conversion rates (for more sales or return visits).

Images reinforce text
Images can include photos, graphics, illustrations, logos of your own or that you create or purchase.  Professionally photographed images may be a requirement for glossy brochures, but there are sections of your website which may work well with simple candid photos or basic diagrams.  “A picture is worth a thousand words”, so use visuals to complement and help explain what you are saying in text form.

Images should reinforce text.

Dispose of unnecessary images
Do not include images unless they support the message of that particular section of your site.  Don’t confuse visitors by adding photos just because they’re pretty.  If the correlation of images to your text isn’t apparent enough, you are not only wasting space, but wasting the time of visitors.  If they came to your site to find a solution to a problem, a photo of your family on your Services page may aggravate them since they have to scroll past it to find what they seek.  However, that same photo on your “About Us” page may put them more at ease since they appreciate the human touch.

As many images as possible
Insert appropriate photos and graphics, even if they are not the primary subject matter.  On the web, you have plenty of room to add them.  Convey your message in seconds, saving viewers time and the work of reading those extra thousand words.
 - Take the time to gather or photograph images if you don’t already have a sufficient quantity.  Choose the best so your webmaster doesn’t have to guess what to use.
 - Several small images may be better than one larger one, since you have more opportunities to show just what the visitor is looking for
 - Besides products, people or places, images can be used as metaphors or to illustrate a theme:  a clock to signify time savings; a handshake to signify a successful partnership; a lightbulb to signify an idea.
 - Include actual photos of your organization rather than stock (clipart) photos.  You’ll make more of an impact with the real thing!

Crop images
Page space is valuable, so before uploading photos, remove any excess space that is not important and ensure that the subject is centered in the image. 

Optimize images
You must optimize the photo or graphic to reduce the dimensions and file size to an appropriate degree for internet viewing. Photos out of a digital camera may have dimensions as large as 4000 pixels by 3000 pixels and file size of 3-4 MegaBytes (MB). For the web, these numbers must be much lower, for instance, 300 pixels by 200 pixels and under 80 KiloBytes (KB).  Follow these steps, generally:

Open the image in editting software such as Photoshop, Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, or another program that came installed on your PC or came with your digital camera, scanner or printer. Specific procedures are listed below for using Microsoft Paint, which comes installed on many PC’s. When you complete the following steps, you may want to “Save As” a different name, so that you still have a full size original.

1. Crop the image to get rid of any unimportant parts except for the subject(s) of the photo/picture.  Also take the opportunity to adjust brightness and colors.  Snapshots often need some brightening for proper display.

2. Reduce the width/height, maintaining the proper ratio. It may start as over 1200px of both and you need it to be at least under 500px for both for a very large display and as little as 150-250px for a large thumbnail size.

3. Doing both of these will greatly reduce the “file size”. For a regular size photo on a website, we need it to be under 80kb, unless it will be appearing in a new window as a blown-up size. If the file size is too high, many imaging software programs will allow you to reduce the “image quality” (for example, from maybe 95% to 85% or from 10 to 8 on a scale of ten.)
Image filenames
“Name” of image is something like “joe23.jpg” or “DSC001255.JPG” or “logo1.gif”. It is usually case sensitive so joe.JPG is different from joe.jpg.  Do not leave spaces in filename. Underscore character is OK to use.  To prevent typos, it is usually best to shorten image names.

Image format must be .jpg or .gif. If it has an extension such as .tif, .bmp, .swf, .png or something else, it must be changed.  Since working with images can be time consuming, any of the above that you can do before sending them to a web designer will save you money.
More info in my website tips eBook.

Finding the best domain name (web address) can help you achieve higher search engine ranking.

Use search terms in domain name
When the internet was in it’s infancy, everyone scrambled for the shortest possible web addresses.  This works well when your name is “IBM” but can get tricky if your name is “Peoria Day Nursery and Children’s Center Preschool”.  Abbreviations can work well if they are logical, but for search engine purposes, “PDNCC.org” is not helpful since it doesn’t include words that people would search for such as nursery, children, preschool, daycare, etc. 

Keywords included in web addresses carry considerable weight with search engines.  They figure that if the word “school” is part of a web address, then that site would likely be of interest to a web surfer doing a search including the word “school”.  So if the name of your organization is “ABC company” and you sell shoes and boots, for SEO purposes, instead of ABC.com you’d be better off with ABCShoes.com or ABCShoesandBoots.com.  Adding dashes (-) to separate words does not necessarily help, and it could confuse people. 

While it is always proper to use the company name as the domain, if your site has a particular geographic focus, including it can give a significant boost in rank.  Using your location as part of the URL helps you show up when visitors key in the city or state they are interested in.  “ABCShoesNewYork.com” tells us your company name, what you sell and where you are.

Many organizations purchase several domain names, to prevent their competition from using similar ones to try to confuse people into visiting the wrong website.
At around $10 per year for each name, purchasing a few could be inexpensive insurance.  ABC may go with ABCShoes.com, ABC-Shoes.com, ABCShoesandBoots.com, ABCShoes.net and have each of those domains forward to the official web address so visitors would end up at the same destination regardless of which of the above they punched in.
More information

Establish a concise list of objectives for your website.
What do you want to accomplish? Sell a product?  Sell a service? Gather contact info for emailing or calling?  Sign up a new member?  Motivate to visit a physical location? Motivate to call?  Invite to take a survey?  Invite to submit feedback?  When you’ve decided what actions to prompt visitors to take, you can design your site for all pages to work towards that goal or goals.

Determine your market niche and focus.

 
If you want to drive people to visit your brick and mortar location, be sure that maps and driving directions are prominent.  Include photos of the location.  Include testimonials of how easy it was for customers to find it and what great service they received there.  Make your business hours clear.
 
What is your niche market?
If you have several goals, you may need to decide between having one or more sites.  With multiple products or services that are closely related, one site may be sufficient, but if they differ slightly or you’ll be marketing them differently, unique sites may be best so that each can achieve it’s particular purpose.  One larger site can be easier to administer and the combined volume of content could be better for SEO.

Keep your navigation logical and your order process simple.  Offer “help” pages or windows when any doubt could arise about what visitors should do next or what information to enter in forms.  This is where “pop-up windows” can be helpful.  If someone is interested enough to take out their credit card or submit information, don’t lose them by complicating the process.  Make it clear what buttons to press and which links to choose for their individual needs.

Identify your target audience
Who exactly are you trying to reach?  Are they located in a particular geographic area?  How old are they and might they have any technical or physical challenges?  What information do they need, and how fast? Will graphics help?  What is their typical financial situation?  Are they male, female or both?  What is their age group and education level?  What keywords would they use to describe your product/service?  Answering these questions will help improve your conversion rate without wasted effort and cost.  The better you understand your customers, the easier to meet their needs.  What is your niche?
The above factors could help you determine any of these:
 - Language(s) for site to use and/or how formal text should be
 - Text size and colors
 - Amount of text per page and reading level of terminology used
 - Objective of site (online sale or visit location or contact via phone or email)
 - Types of images to best reinforce text
 - Most appealing images of people (similar age/race/occupational make-up)

1. Establish a concise list of objectives.
   What do we want to accomplish?
2. Understand the target audience.
   What information do they need, and how fast? Will graphics help?
3. Provide quality content and keep it concise.
   It must immediately convey it’s purpose, or visitors will leave.
4. Develop a site map based on a logical sequence to display information.
5. The navigation flow from page to page should be logical and consistent.
6. Utilize multimedia features if they aid communication.
   Mouse rollovers, animated images, sound, etc. can reinforce the text.
7. Make it Search Engine friendly. Appropriate title, SEO keywords and META tags are essential to generating traffic.
8. Maintain the site on a regular basis to keep it fresh and give visitors a reason to return.
9. Integrate the site with other components of your marketing plan.
10. Work with a professional developer who has an understanding of both technological and marketing aspects.