Stock photos are cheap. For a few dollars, you can get a generic photo with happy, smiling professional models. It makes your web site looks pretty.
But if your goal is to drive new business and convert web site visitors into customers, stock photos are a waste of valuable Internet real estate. Let’s put it another way: If stock photos were food, they would be considered empty calories—Visual bloat that slows down site loading times with no benefit to you. Who needs that?
Authenticity works
Mason Resnick, owner of Mason Resnick Photography, and the author of this article.
This is NOT a stock photo!
In surveys and comparison tests, web sites that replace stock photos real, professional-quality photos of the actual people in a company, or the actual products or services, conversion rates soared, between 35 and 45%! Web marketing experts and designers alike agree that although it may cost more to hire a photographer, the additional revenue generated by using real, original photos more than justifies the expense.
Photos depicting your staff and facility help to engage viewers and make your site more relevant to them. This kind of visual storytelling can introduce you to your customers and begin the process of establishing trust. This leads to higher conversion rates.
Stock photos, conversely, look fake and cause potential customers to lose trust in your business before they’ve even made contact. And the time it takes to find a good photo that hasn’t been used elsewhere is time away from working on your business.
Plus…there’s nothing to prevent your competitors from using the same stock photos you use. Some images, such as this one, has been used thousands of times! That could be awkward. (See item # 2 in this article)
Good Visual Content Makes $enese
Case studies such as this one and this one show the positive effect simply changing from a stock photo to a photo of a business owner or staff can have on a web site’s effectiveness as a marketing tool.
Eyetracking studies (which track eye momement around web sites) show a that photos that tell the story of your business or show members of your team, or depict products in use or installed, are more closely scrutinized, while stock photos of models or feel-good images are generally ignored. This site offers great insight into how original photos work better.
Finally, 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business that has an image show up in local search results, and that 67% of consumers surveyed by a major marketing company say that quality of a product image is very important in selecting and purchasing a product. Those images supplied by the manufacturer may be perfect, but since all of your competitors have the same images, not as effective as they could be.
Hire A Pro
So, get more engagements, more conversions and more business. Hire a professional photographer.
Mason Resnick Photography can handle all of your online photography needs, from headshots to environmental portraits (photos of individuals that include a background that tells something about the person in the photo) to product photography, group photos, facility photos, and more. Let’s talk about your needs and collaborate to create unique, high-quality still images that will work for your business.
Book your web photography shoot today!
Article © Mason Resnick Photography