Photos are a key element of almost every website.
They serve not only to represent the brand and create the feelings you want to evoke in your users, but also for visual balance. The latter is achieved because without photos (or other images), all pages of your site will look heavy and boring.
Photos have several basic functions that are best achieved through them.
Product Presentation
If you offer a physical product, this is the best way to present it. Especially if you find a more skilled photographer and/or photograph the construction process. The old saying “The eye can see, the hand can touch” quite well expresses the human need to see something before drawing any conclusions about it. Of course, we all know that photographs are manipulated a lot – fast food chains and packages of chips come to mind. It is for this reason that you should try to present your photos in the best light and express the truth at the same time.
“A lie has short legs,” says another folk proverb. If you present your products in too good a light, which leads to over-perception, to which it cannot respond, you may get into trouble, including legal ones.
Visual balance
When presenting a product, just like when presenting a service, you have probably noticed that very often the text is in a large size (and a small amount), and is supplemented with an image. Often this is a photo, but it can also be an illustration.
These images create visual weight on the other half of the page, thus balancing the weight of the text. This facilitates and guides the gaze down the page.
In certain cases, such as the so-called “sales funnels”, which are essentially just landing pages, this balance is achieved with other elements, including shapes – text size, etc.
Photos are magnets
The sclera – the white part of the human eye – serves to allow others around us to see where we are looking. The eyes of other mammals also have sclera, but it is often a significantly smaller percentage of the eye. The white of the eye, from an evolutionary point of view, helps protect us from a potential threat. Since we are naturally attracted to human eyes, and even if you observe yourself, you will notice if the expression and/or duration of the gaze of an interlocutor or a random passerby is directed in one direction for too long, it is a natural instinct to follow the gaze to understand what is happening.
In the same way, our gaze is attracted to the eyes in photographs.
Therefore, if you place a photograph of a person (or other living being) next to text, it is good to direct the gaze either directly towards the reader or towards the text, but not beyond it. Of course, this will not lead to a sale in itself, but it is good practice.
