In this modern age, images do all the talking. And whilst beautiful, full-screen, immersive photos of your bathrooms’ hand soap may look great, it could also work to the detriment of your website and its conversion rate.
What things should you be aware of when it comes to images on your website? What can you and your website developers do to ensure your site performs to the best of its ability?
File type and size is incredibly important
When a page loads, the majority of data transferred is of images. For instance, if you were to have a webpage coming in at 2MB, chances are over half of that would be images. The rest would be the code itself, which in reality is more KB rather than MB.
What can you do to reduce this?
When you upload your own images there’s certain rules and guidelines you should abide by.
Only use the .png filetype if the image is to be transparent unless it’s a graphic with flat colours. Otherwise, for pictures, always use .jpg. All images ideally should not be more than 400kb in file size. We suggest no more than 1600px x 1600px in size, with a resolution of 72dpi.
If you’re on a Mac then this app comes highly recommend:https://imageoptim.com/mac, which reduces the file size of images whilst maintaining the quality. Alternatively, you can use this online tool https://tinyjpg.com/ which also does a great job.
What could taking this step means for your site? Instead of having 5 images at 1MB each, if they all are reduced in size (both physical and file) to 250kb (for example), your page will be 75% lighter, saving nearly 4MB. This will result in a faster page load, a better experience for your visitors, and ultimately a better conversion rate.
What can your website developer do?
Now let’s go into the technical aspect of how images are loaded on your website. This is an incredibly effective technique known as “lazy loading”. This will stop all images loading on your page all at once as soon as the page loads – rather, they will only load when the visitor scrolls and the image nears the viewport. We include this technique in all our bespoke website development, so if you’re interested in seeing what we can do for you, please get in touch. Contact form
Images count for SEO
Did you know that images actually have quite a say on how your website performs in terms of SEO / accessibility?
The key thing to keep in mind is to always add a relevant alt tag; which is especially important for accessibility – as visitors will visual impairments will be able to understand what the image is meant to be. Google also reads these tags, and the images should add weight to the focus of the page.
On top of the alt tags, the file names themselves should be relevant. A suitable file name can help an image show up in Google image search. Having an image named something like DSC0234.jpg wouldn’t work as well as superior-room-example-hotel.jpg (replace “example-hotel” with your hotel name) for instance.
Images speak to the visitor
Now we’ve covered a more robotic/technical approach, let’s consider the human angle.
The type of image – visually – speak to the visitor. Is your website full of cold, personality-deficient stock images? Rather, your images need to be personable, and what’s incredibly important is that they have actual people in them. We see quite a lot of hotel clients with images of their restaurants or entrance lobbies empty. This doesn’t make it look the most inviting. However, if these images have people having the time of their life, smiling their heads off, it’s more attractive the visitor.
Don’t forget – at the end of the day, if you’re selling a product, you need to show the product itself. Sometimes abstract, arty-farty images don’t work if they become the focus. Keep the main images simple, classy, and elegant. They get the point across and will aid conversion.
UP Hotel Agency is a multi-award winning agency
At UP, we pride ourselves on creating stunning, bespoke websites. And our award record proves that. Winning 3 “Outstanding Web Developer” awards in a row, we are well-known within the industry as an industry-leading design, development and digital agency who can cater for you and your needs, no matter what your budget. Get in touch today to see what we can do for you and your hotel! Contact us now!