In years gone by, many websites would have included a lot of text-based information and a relatively low amount of images. There are numerous reasons and theories for this, but the main ideology behind those choices were that users generally wanted to read more, and our dial-up connections simply took too long to load in images of an acceptable quality.
However, times have changed, and so has web design. Websites now feature much less text and much more imagery than before which makes images much more important on a website. We approached Simon Steinberger, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pixabay (a leading source of free images) to ask him about the best practices for image use on websites, and how you can improve yours.
Why are good quality images so important on a website?
Images often make the first impression on a website - be it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or any other referring source - or on your website directly, when new visitors find your page through Google. And just like in real life, the first impression counts a lot. Show your users a wasteland of text, and off they go to the next search result. And it's more than just about presenting a visually pleasing content: web users are usually in a hurry. So, you'll want to show them what your website is about in a few seconds. And as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words - and it's true.
Can poor images have a negative impact on a website?
Various published tests (example: www.1stwebdesigner.com/web-design-bounce-rate) over the past years show that poor design is increasingly less tolerable. If I personally find an article with low quality images, I'm inclined to assume the content itself will probably be just as poor. And I guess, it's not just me reacting like that. I'll often try my luck first with other resources. And only if nothing (seemingly) better comes up, I'll return to the initially discarded page.
What makes a great image?
First of all, an image shouldn't have any obvious technical flaws, such as unintentional blurriness, noise, dirt spots, or poor colors. Aside from that, a great image should have a precise subject. Remember the "1,000 words" saying? A great image should do exactly that: The viewer should have a clear idea of what it stands for or what the image tries to say. After all, your image should visitors help to understand the content of your website. So, choose something that really is representative for your content or services.
Pixabay has more than 500,000 free images for businesses and individuals to use - do you find any common themes in the types of images people are looking for?
Aside from seasonal topics, like Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and so on, many people look for generic terms like "business", "sports", or "finance". As far as I can tell, many users don't just want to have a certain plain object displayed - it rather seems to be the whole arrangement in a picture that counts. For example, it's not just a photo of a cup of tea, what they are looking for. Far better is a freshly brewed, steaming cup of tea that somebody hold in their hands in an overall relaxed background/atmosphere.
Ensuring your images are 'ready for web' is important, especially as cameras now have the ability to produce extremely high-resolution images. What steps would you recommend users take?
On Pixabay, we're looking specifically for high resolution photos. That's because many of them are used for printing and other demanding applications. Concerning web usage, it's a really bad idea to use high resolution images. Such images are way to big concerning file size and they don't give you any advantage. On the contrary: using huge images on websites is harmful! It makes your site sluggish. Especially users on slow (mobile) connections will probably never get to see your page - and for Google, site performance is a clear ranking signal. So, I'd recommend this: Make the images as small as possible and as large as necessary. Compress them through JPG or PNG (read up on this!) as much as possible, while retaining a reasonable quality for keeping it visually very pleasing. When using images as background, consider rendering them blurred. You can see this effect for example on our login page. By this, the file size can be reduced dramatically without noticeable loss of quality.
It can often be confusing when you can and cannot use an image found on the internet, especially with the different types of "creative commons" - what are the general rules and regulations with these?
That was actually one of the main reasons for creating Pixabay. Most free images licenses out there - CC-By included - require giving credits to the original author. Sometimes it suffices mentioning the name of the author next to the image, in other cases a link to the source is also imperative. Creative Commons brought a lot of structure into this, but still: It's best to read the individual requirements on the source page where you download an image.
Creative Commons CC0, under which all Pixabay images are released, is different and technically it's not even a license; it's a copyright waiver. Attribution is voluntary and the images may be used for practically anything - as long as the depicted content itself is not protected: Naturally, you cannot do anything you like with a Facebook logo. But you may use it freely in your blog posts.
If you could give one piece advice to someone looking for images for their website and marketing campaign, what would it be?
Use Pixabay as your source - and recommend it to all your friends, family members, your colleagues, and anybody you encounter outside on the streets Just kidding. Wherever you find suitable images, do read the terms of use. If none are given, assume the image is protected and you are not allowed to use it! So, in the end, my advice would really be: use Pixabay!
We'd like to give a big thank you to Simon to sharing his expertise with us and allowing us to share that with you! All of the images in this blog (and many in our other blogs) have come courtesy of Pixabay, so you can take a look at the images they have available at Pixabay.com.