The role of great website photography

If you’re selling products or showcasing your services online, great website photography is an essential piece of the effective website puzzle.

These days, everyone owns a digital camera. As a result, the number of amateur photographers has blossomed worldwide. This is great news for the family album, but can spell disaster for the website photography on small business websites.

Whilst I strongly recommend you hire a professional photographer, I realise this is cost prohibitive for many, so here are some tips for making your website photos look more attractive.

1. Focus and clarity

Don’t ever use blurry or out of focus photos. Always reshoot these until you’ve achieved a crisp subject.

Most digital cameras perform better with plenty of light, so if you’re taking shots inside, open up curtains, turn on lights and encourage as much brightness in the room as possible.

If you have a viewfinder on your camera, use it instead of the LCD screen. It’s much harder to hold the camera steady when it is away from your body.

2. Similar lighting

When taking a series of photos of a similar theme, keep the background and lighting the same in each photo. This is particularly important when you have a shopping cart website and are displaying many products on the same page.

It will help to have a dedicated space for taking product photos where you know the light will always be the same.

Products photographed with a clean white background are more popular for eCommerce websites as they provide no distraction from the item being sold.

3. Simple backgrounds

Because the photos displayed on websites are quite small, less complex photos look much better. Try for shots with a single subject and a simple, plain background.

This is important when taking photos of landscapes, scenery or buildings. Look for angles which will give you an uncluttered shot and pick a day with a cloudless sky.

4. Put people in the picture

People in your photos will help your website visitors put themselves in the picture. This is particularly important for travel and tourism businesses which are selling an experience rather than a product.

Carefully consider the age and look of your models, as you want to align your imagery as closely as practical to your target demographic.

For example, travel & tourism sites could feature people doing enjoyable activities such as sipping cocktails, lazing around a pool or simply soaking up their surroundings.

5. Include your ugly mug!

Include photos of yourself and anything else people might associate with your business, such as your office or building, or staff looking smart.

The Internet’s anonymity is impersonal, so website photos of you give visitors the people contact they miss from a face-to-face transaction. It also raises your credibility through recognition.

Your website visitors will draw opinions about your business from the visual feedback on your website in a couple of seconds.

Sub-standard website photography casts a grey cloud over your business and will undoubtedly turn your customers away. Abundant and honest photography does just the opposite, drawing people to your product range and encouraging them to buy.

Nicky Jurd is a friendly geek who provides business owners with a plain English approach to the web. She runs a full service web-development firm in sunny Cairns, and writes about effective small business websites through her blog.

13 comments | Add your own 1 2 3 | Next» View all»

Great points, Nicky.
I am always amazed at how many websites also have photos which are not to scale, warped vertically or horizontally. With competitors only a click away, you simply can't afford to make these kinds of mistakes! Amanda Jephtha from Sydney
I hate websites that have photos of people from photo libraries on their website - they do not reach out to me. Heather Smith from SUNNY BRISBANE! | Read my articles
Similar lighting is the most difficult aspect, especially when taking photo's on seperate occasions. Any hints or tips for building a lightbox or something similar for taking photo's of specific items. i.e a client takes photo's of cupcakes she makes. Top 10 Rankings from Sydney
I agree, similar lighting is really tricky across a varied timeframe.
The cheapest and quickest solution is to shoot all your pictures in the same place, at the same time of day and write down which settings you used on the camera. This is even better if you have a tripod for your camera, and can put it in the same place to achieve a similar angle on each shot.
Lightboxes can be quite costly, but I recently read a great article about building your own from an Australian photographer. Have a peek: http://www.jeremydaalder.com/singleArticle.php?articleID=2. Nicky Jurd from Cairns, Australia | Read my articles
I work as a web designer and agree that it is extremely difficult to work with low quality images.
The images, along with good branding, help create professional impact within the first 2 seconds of viewing a website.
I too would prefer to use less stock photography but 9 times out of 10 the images supplied for websites are completely unsuitable.
Great article Nicky, the friendly geek! Belinda Vere from Cairns
Stock imagery has a place on websites. I don’t know how to describe it, but some images (especially ones with people) have a real 'I am a stock image and have no relationship to this business'.
A photo should not only convey a sense of style and class to a website, it should also give a customer an immediate sense of the business and its staff. Adam from Cairns, Queensland Australia

13 comments | Add your own 1 2 3 | Next» View all»

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