Photographies are very important on your website, no matter your field or topic. Every kind of website needs high-quality images.
However, knowing what kind of images to publish, and more important, where to find them, are sometimes overwhelming.
Here I will give you some photography tips for your website and I will give you a list of the best Stock Images.
Photography Tips
Service Website
This could be the most difficult because you don’t have a tangible product to take photos and publish them. Your product is intangible and, sometimes, could be difficult to demonstrate its value to your potential clients.
First of all, you need a photo or photos of yourself. If you are a group of people you should post a photo of each one of them, or better, you can publish a group photo. This is very important because people buy from people. Your potential client wants to know you before buying you anything. But, you need to choose carefully these photos, not every kind of photo of you is good for your website. This photo should be professional, with a high quality (not pixeled and not too small), you should show your face clearly and, if it’s possible, you should smile.
Besides, this photo should represent you, your personality. For this, you have to choose the clothes, your makeup, and hairstyle.
Moreover, you can post photos of you or your team working. These are very good photos also because they show the place where you work and how you work. Besides, they are natural photos, or at least, look more natural than the typical photo of your face smiling to the camera.
Another choice is to post photos in environments that represent your personality. For example, near the sea, in a park, and so on. But, remember professional photos. Your website is not facebook.
Regarding your services, it depends on what you offer. For example, if you offer face-to-face courses you can post photos giving those courses.
If you offer another kind of service like coaching you can post photos talking with a client or giving a speech.
But if you offer for example online courses, or you are a community manager is even more difficult. In this kind of cases is better not to publish any kind of photos. Instead, you can use icons or graphics that represent your services.
Product Website
If you sell a tangible product is easier.
However, you should post a photo of yourself or your team as well. Your product is very important but you are very important too. At least, for your customer.
Be careful with your product photos. I see a lot of e-commerce that doesn’t have good product photos and this is a pity because your product is what you offer and your customer doesn’t know anything about it. They don’t know if it’s good or not if it’s suitable for them or not…. So take your time and take good photos of your product. Preferably with a white background. However, if your product is white, it would be better to choose a gray or even black background so your product will stand out.
It’s advisable to post photos of different angles. Remember, your customer doesn’t know your product, so maybe for you, it’s obvious how is your product but for your customer, the more photos you publish, the better.
Another good advice is to complete this photos with one or two photos in a real environment. For example, if you sell kitchen material or ornaments for home, it would be advisable to post a photo using this object or this objects in a nice environment.
Here you have a sample of a shooting that I made some years ago for Sargadelos. It was the summer collection and the concept of the campaign was a tribute to the first years of the company. They use the first designs that they had in the first years. The goal was to highlight how many years the company has been operating and how they were innovating as the years go by. The potential customer of this brand is people between 35 and 70 years. It’s a very classical brand. So besides the typical photos with a neutral background, I prepared some photos with the product in an environment. It’s a very classical environment and with an “old style” reflecting the concept of the collection.
With this, I want to tell you that around your product you can create a story. Something to tell to your potential customers. And you can transmit this story through the photography.
Blog
The blogs are the weakest. Because people publish a post with different topics every week so sometimes the photographies don’t have any kind of consistency. And this is a huge problem. Remember that your blog is part of your brand, part of your product.
The most important rule is to choose photos that are aligned with your photographies and your style in your website. If you have classical photos on your website or your target is very classic, you should choose photos with this style.
Another tip is to look what your competitors are doing, which kind of photos they choose. And you have to choose different ones. It happens regularly that I see the same photos over and over again. For example, in a post about community managers or digital marketing I see the same photos. This is boring and it doesn’t help you to build your brand. On the contrary, you are showing that you are exactly the same as your competitors.
The best you can do is to take your own photos or design your own graphics. But I know that this could be difficult. Not only you need time to do it, but also, you need the necessary skills to do it. Sometimes, I look for photos on stock images as well.
The best Stock Images
Free
Be careful with free stock images. You should read the FAQS before because sometimes you have to attribute credit (write the name of the website or of the author below the image).
– Pixbay
I like a lot this website. It has high-quality images and some of them are very original. However, be careful. This website is gaining a lot of popularity recently and I see the same photo several times. Especially, photos of startups or of young people working.
– Pexels
I like this website a lot too. Great photos. All of them free.
Startups are a trend nowadays. On this website, you can find a lot of photos related to startups for free.
– Unsplash
This website adds 10 new photos every 10 days and usually they have a very high quality. They are usually related to nature or abstract.
This website has a lot of photos related to nature and landscapes. You have to attribute the credit if you use one of them.
This website has a lot of photos related to food. If you run a restaurant or are a nutritionist, this website could be a must for you.
Attribution is required.
Premium
Sometimes, it’s advisable to pay for a good photo and make a difference between you and your competitors. Here are the best ones:
This website has a different kind of utilities. Photos, illustrations, icons…
Besides, you have different plans. For example, the basic one offers 5 photos for 39€ or 25 photos for 179€.
– iStock
This website has photos, audios, videos, and illustrations.
You can subscribe with a monthly fee that starts at 35€ or buy credits and download one specific image only. This system is great if you only need a few photos.
– Fotolia
This is the most famous. At least, here in Spain.
This belongs to Shutterstock and offers different monthly fees depending on the number of photos that you want to download per month.
– 123RF
Another very famous one.
Did you know these stock image websites? Do you know another one that is not here? Let me know in the comments!