The guiding role of pictures in the design of electronic business websites

Images will help you achieve your business goals and may also hurt your conversion rate. It sounds simple, but unless you can really understand how pictures are going to lead people to make a purchase decision, some of the design nuances of the picture may have a different effect on your conversion rate.

So, starting today, don't blindly add some unnecessary decorative pictures to your site!

Why shouldn't you use pictures to decorate

If you often write sales copy or landing Page, you may have heard the words: "A word worth a daughter, a map of thousands of words", this is absolutely a truth ... The premise is that you use the correct picture. The wrong picture usually makes people feel confused and easily overlooked. "What makes a picture just right, and does it complement the content?"

Let's look at the following test:

If you just copy some pictures from Flickr or other popular image sites to your site, you'll probably have the wrong picture in place.

Yes, you may think it attracts people's attention, but unless the picture is directly related to what you are talking about, the visitor is likely to ignore it.

T-mobile, for example, highlighted their spokesperson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, on their website, perhaps the most beautiful woman ever to have a phone in her ear, but for a potential phone buyer, who cares!

In terms of user interface engineering,

"There is an older customer who is interested in buying a mobile phone with a button that is slightly larger and easier to press, and he feels a little frustrated when he can't tell the size of the phone button on any of the images on the site." And when he saw Catherine Zeta – Jones, who was banner by a giant ad he liked in his ear, he was thoroughly angered. The customer told me: "She is a very beautiful woman, but I just want to see how big the button, this and her Mimi is not a hair of the relationship is not, can not afford to hurt Ah!"

Why does the customer feel this way?

Catherine Zeta – Jones was used as a mobile phone ornament. Yes, she may be really attractive, but how does that help T-mobile's phone sales? People want to see how the phone looks, not what star is holding it.

When using pictures, make sure you have a reason to do so, we have many reasons to use images on our website or blog, and when we use pictures, make sure you don't use pictures just because "it looks good".

What is the real reason for using pictures?

Take a look at the following three examples:

1: When you sell products, use the picture of the product

You may think this is a common sense who all understand, do not know if you have ever visited the real estate site?

Almost no home sales, intermediary sites for their sales/agent of the property to provide enough detailed pictures.

I do not know, know more let me feel the distress is what?

A few years ago I was looking for a rental house from the Internet and it was very hard to find pictures of the houses I was interested in, but the photo of the realtor was plastered everywhere.

Listen to me buddy: I just want to see what the kitchen looks like, if you don't want to be my cook or the baby's nanny, who wants to see what you look like!

Before we go on, I have a piece of advice:

When you are ready to use the product picture, make sure your picture highlights the main features of the product. To illustrate this point, let's take a look at this E-commerce case from Jakob Nielsen:

On the Pottery Barn site there is a category page for bookcases, and visitors spend a lot of time looking at thumbnails of each bookcase. In Amazon.com, when visitors look at the category page of the TV, they spend time reading the description of the TV, ignoring the product picture.

Why is that so? The product photos of the bookcase are effective in helping people understand what they are getting ready to buy, and the picture of the TV products looks the same, which is why people ignore pictures of TV products.

Now let's talk about what happens if you don't run a big E-commerce site and just sell a product.

Let's refer to the MacBook Air marketing case:

Do you know why the picture above is a genius?

The main selling point of the MacBook Air is not its speed, but its sheer size.

What better way to show the main features of the product than to gently drag the MacBook Air out of the envelope?

Don't talk too much about the product itself, just tell people how small it is, and that's why people buy it.

Now ask yourself:

When you sell a product, what is the main reason people want to pay for a product?

Once you've got the answer, put your answer in a picture ..., maybe a few pictures, and you'll find that more visitors are converted to your customers.

2: Use a picture next to short lines of text

People prefer shorter lines of text, because short rows are rarely squeezed by pictures and are easier to read.

In fact, people reading longer lines (about 100 characters per line) are faster than reading short lines, because there is less eye movement.

This is also my image on the quanzhibaba.com use strategy. I usually use a 200-pixel-wide picture in my blog post to make my text line length shorter so readers can start reading my article.

Normally, after 3 to 5 statements, my length will grow. Articles that usually use this strategy are more likely to be read out and shared into social networks.

To take advantage of this tactic, you need to figure out how to shorten your length to 40-60 characters, and use a picture to fill the remaining space.

If you want to persuade people to buy your product or subscribe to your blog, you need to let them know what you've provided to them, and that's why I like this picture strategy. not limited to blog posts, it is also valuable to use this strategy in the design of landing page.

3: Use the picture to guide the visitor's attention

Whether you are smart or stupid, even if you are naturally not like to get together, do not like the flow, you think you are not a curious person. However, people are often unable to resist certain special things, as we are going to mention in the following 3 scenarios:

People can't resist the sight of others

People can't resist the direction that an arrow is pointing

People can't resist the "line of sight" that follows everything.

Curiosity is our nature, if someone is looking at something, we will unconsciously look at the past and try to find an answer. If an arrow points to a direction, we also want to find the answer. Finally, objects tend to have a "line of sight", with arrows in general, these things will guide us to find the answer, maybe you are not consciously to follow, but in fact, we always have a "WHY" hidden deep inside.

Let's look at this chemistry.com landing Page:

Where do you think people will notice when they come to this landing page?

If you're guessing it's a registration form, you're absolutely right.

In another example, a test by Usable world shows a similar result:

Pretty cool, huh? See how people follow their baby's eyes? People also noticed the bottom of the graph, because the baby's chin to the second figure played a similar role to the arrow.

The role of the arrow is self-evident, if you place a brightly colored arrow on your page, pointing to a specific point where people tend to stare.

Note: Usually only the affiliate marketer will use the arrows, we'd better use the more subtle arrows like "sight".

How do these pictures help us improve the conversion rate?

I often see a lot of blogs on the use of character pictures, so that people follow the image of the characters to leave their site.

It's really not a sensible choice. If you have a character picture, let the character's gaze point to where you need attention, otherwise you will probably be able to steer the visitor out of their computer screen.

There is one additional benefit:

You may think you don't need to guide people to look at a place, because everything is obvious on your page.

Let me tell you this: people use their conditioned nerves to navigate the web, and it's really about scanning the web, and it's easy for them to miss out on those things that are especially important to your business goals.

You should use all the weapons you can use to make sure they notice what you most want them to see.

Why you need to use real character images (not cartoons)

If you can see this article here, congratulations, for people who eat on the site, you are likely to become the smartest person in the group of 1%.

But here I have a final tip for you:

Whether you're running a website as a company, Freelancer, or any other form of business, your site should always include a picture of you and your team.

Why?

People like to connect with people ... Rather than companies or companies that don't show up.

I recently made an eye-track test on my internet Marketing blog, and I found that visitors spend a lot of time in the footer section of my site.

Yes, they're looking for what else they can do on my site, and if I have a wonderful about me page, it would be a good idea to put a nice photo and a brief introduction, or add a mailing list.

There is one good thing about using real photos on your website:

People like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Jakob Nielson in the article "the Top ten usability design mistakes of the blog" mentions that if you don't get your picture, people will often go to the bad side to speculate on why you don't want to show up and unconsciously assume you're a untrustworthy person.

Would you buy something from a masked man? I wouldn't. Therefore, use real photos to build your credibility, to improve the conversion rate.