The best creative web design for clients all have one thing in common; image quality. Images are the number one visual way information is communicated and in the day and age of increasing demands for quick information, images do a great job at telling a story quickly for site visitors. Images are crucial for efficient web design because they break up content on pages which can be overwhelming for visitors. Essentially, people want information fast, and when they don’t get the answer to a search phrase, they leave the site (contributing to high bounce rates, low conversions, and lowered SEO scores). What better way to convey information quickly than through pertinent images paired with good keyword-heavy content aiming to match a visitor’s search phrase?
Efficient use of images can be hugely beneficial to a site and can add to a business’s branding, their tone toward visitors, their business’s image, efficiency in converting visitors, guiding efficient site-navigation, SEO, and much more. Images work hand in hand with creative web design and are increasingly recognized in their importance in conveying information:
“A common finding is an observed processing superiority of pictures as compared to words, suggesting that pictures have a faster and more direct access to meaning, while words are discussed to require additional translational activity...” -Schlochtermeier, et al. (2013).
Given the importance of images to visitors, it is good to know what constitutes as good images for a website to make the most of creative web design.
When people think of the best web design they typically only think of a site’s layout. However, most people forget that a large portion of layout is where to place high-quality images and content. The best web design is unique for each client and their business. However, there are similarities with site layouts and how images are arranged:
Simple and effective designs use layouts with images that do not confuse visitors, help them navigate the site, sell your unique message, and help convert visitors into a customers. Good layouts also use images to guide visitors toward pertinent pages or locations on their site.
There is a misconception that images need to be small for a website. Images need to be as big as possible to get high resolution, only their file sizes need to be small. Thankfully OCG takes care of all file compression so even if you give us massive photos, we ensure they are optimized on your website. Images that are too small are 'pixelated' or 'low-res' and look bad on websites and can hurt your online appearance and brand identity.
High Res Image
Low Res Image
The images need to be well lit. Avoid using a flash because it tends to wash out all images. The main source of lighting should not be behind the subject either and you should avoid highly contrasted images that add a lot of distracting patterns. This is very important because many images on a website have text over them and high-contrast images make it difficult to read the content and can be strenuous to look at on their own.
Good Lighting
Bad Lighting
Having everything in focus can make the image too cluttered and distract from what you really want to viewer to see in the image. A ‘soft-focus’ pulls the viewer’s eye toward the object you want site visitors to pay attention to while softly blurring the rest. This can also help de-clutter busy images.
Good Focus
Bad Focus
Many people think that if you want to draw attention to something it needs to be centered in the image. That can get repetitive with many images on your site. Take images from close up and far away with the subject in different places. It can be a mistake to take all of your images from one perspective using one composition, unless you are taking product shots.
Good Composition
Bad Composition
You may hear web-designers or account-coordinators talking about ‘mastheads’. Mastheads, banners, or site headers are the images that display at the top of each web page. These images need to be large (to work with a responsive website) and need to be ‘landscape’ not ‘portrait’. Additionally, because visitors only see a tiny part of the whole image, it is a good idea for the image to capture 'depth’. For example, instead of taking images from a top-down angle on a subject, try taking shots from different angles that emphasize perspective. A good way to do this is taking a series of images starting from the ground-level and moving up.
Good Perspective
Bad Perspective
Many clients find sites and ask what we can do to make their site more like the example they choose. The most common site people tend to ask for is Apple or other sites for technology companies. So what do they do that makes their layout work so well?
Creativity reigns supreme right? It is common knowledge that only the coolest websites get top exposure. Part of me, as a web designer, hopes this would be true. However, creative web design only takes a business so far. Ultimately, there are thousands of terribly designed websites that get more traffic than award-winners. If you want your website to work for you beyond a cocktail party talking point, then you need to know that Web Design is a part of Internet Marketing and not the same thing.
As cleverly explained by the cartoon, you can have the most creative and interesting website in the world, but if you market it horribly, then not many people will see it and you won’t get a very good return on your investment. OCG Creative’s team of dedicated and nerdy Reno web designers and developers work hard to produce these award winning sites. We have done this for numerous clients for many years. Part of the creative web design also involves the user’s experience with the website, which is why an analogy of a website being a poster is only part-true. In reality, a website is a fluid document – it changes with input from the user and looks different on different devices. OCG works to build the coolest website imaginable for our clients, but we know at the end of the day that it is essential to market it correctly, and websites should never stop when the design is completed.
As a secret confession, I used to wonder this question all the time. There are plenty of online tools to build a website, and before I became a web designer, I even built my own portfolio using one of these tools. The issue with all of them… they’re awful. Even discounting the fact that all of them stop at the end of web design, the web design itself is clunky, confusing, and very limiting. I didn’t realize this until I experienced it first hand. A website should never stop at the end of creative web design. Instead, it should be a rocket-powered branding piece pushing the client forward to more exposure and spurring the start of a comprehensive effort to convert website visits into leads. OCG custom designs each website so it is beautiful and branded, but most importantly, they are scalable and sturdy for expansion in traffic and tailored to convert site visitors into customers.
After website design is completed, many people stop and never touch it again. It’s similar to making a cool poster and then never posting it anywhere. Why? Internet marketing takes effort, DIY site builders don’t have the resources to market each site created and the sites themselves are cluttered and reject efforts to market them. A lot of this is due to lack of on-site SEO support in addition to other elements such as effective landing pages and lack of Conversion Rate Optimization. It is much easier to stop after finishing the web design part.
The point is, OCG Creative is a dedicated and experienced Reno web design and internet marketing agency that has the resources. Websites should be built to be optimized for internet marketing. The issue with DIY site builders, is the website's inability to integrate with a meaningful and comprehensive marketing campaign for individual clients. This is because DIY sites purposefully exclude any means of integrating with an internet marketing plan, it is simply too much effort for DIY site builders to accommodate these features. Internet marketing takes time and a sturdy website foundation specifically built for internet marketing. Additionally DIY site builders don't want to manage campaigns because they take time and constant tuning. Hard work with SEO, Landing Pages, CRO, and other services, take time to gain traction. OCG maintains these campaigns, constantly tailoring our client’s Internet Marketing plans to coincide with optimal conversions including tracking page visits and valued keywords to get them ranking higher. You can’t get that level of detailed attention with do-it-yourself websites. It takes significant time, specialized data collection, and informed decisions to be implemented after data collection to market a website correctly.
If you’re not sure where to go from here knowing all of this or if you still think an awesome looking website is the most important thing for you or your business, give us a call or browse our other topics. We’ve been doing this for a while and know the internet marketing world front and back.