Do you know that there are over 1.5 billion pieces of content on the internet? Any new page or post you create is just addition to that huge stock of content that already exists. So, how do you expect that your website or post will be visible to the internet users? You might give the opinion that your website design is extraordinary and content is rich and relevant. Think again. How do you judge that your content quality is high enough to help your website rank above the already existing websites?
Are You Thinking Right?
You may have the idea that digital marketing, search engine optimization and social media marketing for your website will get your website on the top of search engine rankings. True, if you do it the right way, your website has a high chance to get fairly good ranking. However, it is more important for your website to have the right kind of content presented exactly in the way that will hold the attention of the visitors. Does your website has that x-factor?
Visual Content – The X-Factor That Works for Websites Today
Instead of only website content, let’s consider all sorts of content, so that we can perfectly figure out what exactly holds the attention of the visitors. Let’s consider one of the most popular forms of content – tweets. 140 million tweets are posted on a daily basis. How many of these get retweets? Researches show that posts with visual content like image and videos get 150% more retweets than text posts. You now know what holds visitors to a webpage. Does your website has it?
Why Visual Content?
That you are here on this page, reading this post, proves that you have done some research on the importance of visual content. However, whether you have found the answer to your query or not, check out some essential and significant factors here. Here are 9 reasons why visual content is important for your website.
1. Brain-Friendly
Human brain can process visual content 60,000 times faster than it processes text content. It takes one tenth of second to get the message conveyed through an image, while reading and understanding a 80-100 word content takes nearly 60-80 seconds. So, why make it difficult for the visitors? Use visuals where you can. That will make the visitors love your website unknowingly.
2. Memory-Friendly
Human beings remember 80% of what they see, 20% of what they read and 10% of what they listen to. So, if you present visual content, the visitors will find it easy to remember the information you want to feed them. It is quite natural that visitors love to come back to websites where they find easy – to – remember content. They will remember your website as good as they will remember the content on your website.
3. Sale-Friendly
If your website is an e-commerce platform, visual content is the most important factor that would drive the sale of your products. Visitors will buy your product only if it is listed along with a picture of it. Even if you are selling a service, visual illustration of the details of the service will turn visitors into buyers. Studies show that visitors are 80% more like to make a purchase if you present a slideshow of images or a video about the product.
4. Engagement-Friendly
When you have adequate visual content on your website, it automatically comes with more effective ‘call for action’. Naturally, the web pages are able to keep the audience engaged with its visual content. According to researches, web pages that are rich with visual content (images, videos, tables and infographics) record gain 48% more views, compared to the traffic to the web pages that have text based content.
Further Reading: How to build links with infographics
5. Social Media Friendly
If your website has high quality images and videos related to the business you are doing through the website, it becomes easy for you to do social media marketing for your website. When you share the page, the images or videos are the face of the posts on social media platforms, which increase visibility by a great extent. If you have the infrastructure for the buyers to buy your product directly from the social media platform, your sales figures will go significantly higher. Researches reveal that 64% consumers are more likely to buy a product when they find images or videos on social media.
6. Search Engine Friendly
When you have visuals in your website, it is not just easily comprehensible to the visitors, it also makes your website search engine friendly. However, you have to take care of a few things to make this happen. You have to tag the images or the videos with relevant keywords. In that case they will appear for relevant image and video searches on Google or other search engines. Clicks on those images and videos will lead to your website. In the process, your web pages will get automatically search engine optimized not just for those keywords, but also for that particular niche.
7. Branding Friendly
When you have images, videos and graphic presentations on your website, it indirectly caters to branding of your business. Most of the images, videos and infographics in your website should carry the watermark of your company logo. Wherever those images or videos are shared, or if anyone uses the infogaphics, it will actually be promotion of your brand. With visual content you have another advantage. Unlike text content, visual content is mostly sharable. If you give the visitors the option to share the visuals, it will take your branding venture to a completely new level. People will know about your brand far more quickly than you could ever imagine.
8. Detail Friendly
When you present some kind of data in the text format in front of your visitors, they will take time to comprehend, and especially, to remember. Besides, it is very difficult to present detailed data in text format. You may be able to present them in the text format, but they may not be as effective as they will be if presented in the visual format. Numbers and figures are better comprehensible in the table format. Rather than a text report, an infographic presentation seems logical to understand and easier to remember for the visitors. Therefore, if you have data and details presented in the visual format in your website, it is always be preferred by the visitors to the long text reports that they usually find.
9. Authenticity-Friendly
Consumers, no matter if you are selling products or services, always tend to trust the product/service if they see it. It is the authenticity factor that images and videos cater to when you use them strategically in the website. 90% of the consumers have shared that they trust a product when it is presented with a video. According to the data shared by Cisco, 80% of the internet traffic will be driven by video content by the end of 2019.
So, if you are building a business website now, make sure your website has enough visual content to assure the visitors with the reliability factor. Share videos with the details of the product, if you are selling a product. If you are providing a service, post a video of yourself talking about the niche or the related industry or your experience or your approach while providing the service.
For instance, if you are a graphic designer and provide logo design services, create your own logo in an interesting way, as that is the first thing that people will see when they visit your website, especially if they are looking for a logo to be designed by you. Your website should have images of the logos you have designed for your clients.
It is also necessary to have a video in which you talk about how logo is important for a brand, how you go about a project when you have to create a logo or design a website, what measures you take to make sure that the logo you design is perfect for the kind of business your client has, etc. When your target audience will hear you speak, they will feel assured that they are getting their logo designed by someone who knows his job.
Get Started, Then:
Now that you have known why visual content is important for your website, it is time for you to implement these ideas for your website. With time, the concept of browsing is changing. Competition on the internet is tougher than ever before. You, therefore, have to pick the right strategies. For now, based on your recent most learning, you must have loads of visual content on your website.
Description:
In the time of new age internet business it is essential for websites to have more visual content than text content. Wondering why? Here are 9 reasons why visual content is important for your website.