The old cliché that a picture speaks a thousand words could not be more pertinent when addressing the balance of a website.
Therefore it goes without question that choosing the right images, and then displaying them to a professional standard, will have a huge impact on the appeal of your site, and create a lasting impression for your visitors (for the right reasons!).
One of the of the most common challenges we face when delivering websites is to maintain a level of consistency from our hand crafted designs early in your project, through to the final content and format at the point of launch. Therefore I have listed some points below that will hopefully be of use.
Finding the right images:
- Wherever possible, ensure your images help to tell a story. Header images can take up a large proportion of your website’s retail space and therefore should be at the forefront of your content strategy.
- Select photos or images that fit perfectly with the design, colour scheme and content of your website.
- To minimize scrolling on sub-pages, image banners (also known as hero units) generally pan across the width of the website and are reduced in height from the homepage. If your website has this setup, ensure images are in landscape orientation with enough negative space above and below the point of focus for cropping. I would generally recommend against choosing photos portraying a single person as they are notoriously hard to crop effectively.
Preparing your images:
- For banner images, website headers or pre-set module images (for example a gallery page), our website will auto resize images for you. We strongly recommend that you pre-crop images to the correct aspect ratio. You can often find these dimensions displayed in your admin area next to the image upload field.
- To manually place an image within the content in a text editable area, you will have more flexibility over the size and aspect ratio. It is, however, essential that you resize the images via the built-in image manager to ensure that the web page is not required to load large file sizes. Here is a link to a tutorial for our image manager
The desired outcome of a content managed website is for every page to appear as if it has been hand built with the care and attention of your homepage. Following the above steps will go a long way towards achieving this goal.
If in doubt, ask your project manager or account manager for feedback or assistance. We will be more than happy to help. If your website has gone live, our team can review your website and offer feedback as part of your support contract.
Remember – It is never too late to refine and improve your website!