image for Web Podcast - Episode 7: Preparing Photos

Web Podcast - Episode 7: Preparing Photos

RAZOR Web Design Wire Podcast - find out how you can utilise the web to sell more products and services - with helpful, expert advice from Matt Reid.

Go into detail behind the basics from setting up a website - to how to drive customers through the sales process & make your website work for you!



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Read the transcription of this podcast:

Today we’re talking about images on your website. When you’re doing a website or if you’re revamping a website, photos are very important. They visually tell people about your business and they complement the content of the site.

I’m sure you’ve all been to website that’s made you think “Oh jeez that’s terrible, look at all the text, I’m not reading through all that!”. So, photos are a way to balance out the content. Make it look less wordy, but still have a bit of wording on there.

Photos are obviously very important. The three key ways to doing photos are;
Doing it yourself, which can be cost effective. If you’re good at photography and you don’t use your iPhone, although the iPhone 8 is very good actually. I was playing with mine the other day.

Get a professional to do the photography. Pay an expert to do your photos for you. You’ll get the best result with this method but it is more costly. But as They say “You get what you pay for”.

Use stock photos. Stock photos are very important, you probably all know websites like iStockPhoto or Shutterstock to get these. The price for these can add up quite quickly.

So try to find the best way to do your websites photos. If you’re a hairdresser, you should use your own photos that are taken by yourself or a professional.

If you’re not a professional or don’t have a hobby in it. If you know nothing of exposure and shutter speed and all that carry on. I suggest get a professional to do it as you’ll get a much better finish. You’re site will look much better than if you use a poorly lit iPhone photo.

It’s good to pay for the professionals to do it.

On your homepage have a nice big photo of your hair dressing salon, for example, but then on the portfolio page, people will want to see what you’ve done. In that case it is uneconomical to have a professional to come in every single time to take a photo of someone whose hair you’ve just done. Don’t do that, do it yourself.

But for the main photos for the rest of the site, keep it professional.

This applies to architects, we’ve done a lot of websites for architects over the years and a lot of them have done their own photos and it just doesn't look too good. If I was looking to get a building company on board to build a house for me I’d probably not be happy with those examples.

At the end of the day, yes it costs a few hundred bucks to get your business photographed but it will pay off over time. Especially if you can reuse the photos for years to come. Unless you’re in the clothing industry, then every six months you’ll have to start again.

Get a professional. It’s worth the money. Unless you can do it yourself, but as I’ve said, just use photos that are that are great.
If you’re using stock photos, I use Adobe Stock but there’s Shutterstock and many more. Google royalty free images. You then pay a set fee per image. Most of the time they charge you a certain price, for a certain size image, which is bit of a pain.

Sometimes they’ll charge a monthly fee. Generally you’ll be paying $2 up to $10 a photo. It does add up, if you get the right ones they’ll be valuable.

You can use them again for your website to your signage and even flyers that go through letterboxes. Stock photos are a very good way to go if you don’t want to go the route of the first two options. You can go online, pick a photo you want for a certain page or banner. Just be careful as most stock photos are American based, so you have to pick ones that are relevant to your area.

We are here in New Zealand so it makes sense that we don’t want to use photos that look very American. Which a lot of them are because most of the companies are based in America.
You just have to be aware of that sort of stuff.

If you’re a builder, building companies have a lot of houses in their photos, so it’s key that the stock photos aren’t of American houses, they need to hunt around a bit longer to find houses that look like houses in Australasia or New Zealand. Not the extravagant brick homes like in America. It’s a bit sad that we don’t have them here.

That’s photos guys. It is a tricky subject but it does help your website 100%. Especially if you don’t have them already.

As I said do them correctly.

Thats Matt from RAZOR Web at RAZOR Web Design Wire Podcast, thanks, and join us again next time.