Of everything that can make your website look expensive or cheap, photos carry the most weight. More than the typeface, the colours or the animations.
It's the part of the project that nearly always arrives late and badly, and the only one I can't solve for you: nobody can photograph your premises or your product from their desk.
What usually goes wrong
- 01Not enough light, or yellow bulb light staining everything.
- 02Backgrounds full of things that don't belong: cables, boxes, a plastic chair.
- 03Vertical photos when the site needs horizontal ones.
- 04Images so small they blur the moment they're enlarged.
Which photos you actually need
Fewer than you think, but good ones. These four cover an entire business website.
- 01A wide one of your space or your work, for the home page.
- 02Two or three of what you sell or how you work.
- 03One of you or your team. People buy from people.
- 04A close-up: hands working, the material, the product up close.
What about stock photos?
They work as filler, never as a replacement. A stock shot of smiling people in an office that isn't yours fools nobody, and it's on a thousand other sites. If your business is a physical place, an average photo of your real premises always beats a perfect photo of premises that don't exist.
Taking them yourself with a phone
Today's phones take photos that are more than good enough for a website. What changes the result isn't the camera, it's three things: daylight near a window, an uncluttered background, and holding still for a second before you press. Take plenty and keep few.
If you have to choose between investing in a fancier design or a couple of hours of a photographer, choose the photographer.